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    Gender Differences in Communication

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    Albert Englisher
    Men and women tend to communicate differently for reasons related to their gender. Women generally seek to establish intimacy through discussion of problems and showing empathy, whereas men often aim for straightforward solutions and advice. A study of single-gender discussion groups found that women share personal details, stick to topics longer, and try to include all, while men compete with information and establish hierarchies. Research also shows gender differences in online communication styles and how anonymity impacts interaction patterns.

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    Gender Differences in Communication

    Uploaded by

    Albert Englisher
    162 views2 pages
    Men and women tend to communicate differently for reasons related to their gender. Women generally seek to establish intimacy through discussion of problems and showing empathy, whereas men often aim for straightforward solutions and advice. A study of single-gender discussion groups found that women share personal details, stick to topics longer, and try to include all, while men compete with information and establish hierarchies. Research also shows gender differences in online communication styles and how anonymity impacts interaction patterns.

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    Men and women tend to communicate differently for reasons related to their gender. Women generally seek to establish intimacy through discussion of problems and showing empathy, whereas men often aim for straightforward solutions and advice. A study of single-gender discussion groups found that women share personal details, stick to topics longer, and try to include all, while men compete with information and establish hierarchies. Research also shows gender differences in online communication styles and how anonymity impacts interaction patterns.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    162 views2 pages

    Gender Differences in Communication

    Uploaded by

    Albert Englisher
    Men and women tend to communicate differently for reasons related to their gender. Women generally seek to establish intimacy through discussion of problems and showing empathy, whereas men often aim for straightforward solutions and advice. A study of single-gender discussion groups found that women share personal details, stick to topics longer, and try to include all, while men compete with information and establish hierarchies. Research also shows gender differences in online communication styles and how anonymity impacts interaction patterns.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    Gender Differences in Communication

    All of us have different styles of communicating with other people. Our style depends on
    a lot of things: where we're from, how and where we were brought up, our educational
    background, our age, and it also can depend on our gender. Generally speaking, men
    and women talk differently although there are varying degrees of masculine and
    feminine speech characteristics in each of us. But men and women speak in particular
    ways mostly because those ways are associated with their gender.

    The styles that men and women use to communicate have been described as "debate
    vs. relate", "report vs. rapport, or "competitive vs. cooperative". Men often seek
    straightforward solutions to problems and useful advice whereas women tend to try and
    establish intimacy by discussing problems and showing concern and empathy in order
    to reinforce relationships.

    Jennifer Coates, in her book Women, Men and Language (New York: Longman Inc.,
    1986) studied men-only and women-only discussion groups and found that when
    women talk to each other they reveal a lot about their private lives. They also stick to
    one topic for a long time, let all speakers finish their sentences and try to have everyone
    participate. Men, on the other hand, rarely talked about their personal relationships and
    feelings but "competed to prove themselves better informed about current affairs, travel,
    sport, etc.". The topics changed often and the men tried to "over time, establish a
    reasonably stable hierarchy, with some men dominating conversation and others talking
    very little".

    Dr. Lillian Glass' book He Says, She Says: Closing the Communication Gap Between
    the Sexes (The Putnam Berkeley Group) details her findings on the many differences in
    the way men and women communicate, both verbally and non-verbally. You can have a
    look at what she thinks are the differences in:

    Online Communication
    Since gender isn't readily apparent (unless specified) in online communication, can one
    determine another person's gender just by reading their written words? Susan Herring
    thinks so. In a 1994 talk at a panel called Making the Net *Work*, she said that men and
    women have recognizably different styles in posting to the Internet. She backed up this
    claim with research where she analyzed messages posted by men and women to
    various newsgroups. Read a transcript of her talk for all the details.

    To find out how women and men feel about communicating with each other online, have
    a look at Gladys We's graduate research paper entitled Cross-Gender Communication
    in Cyberspace where she discusses the results of a survey she sent to both men and
    women who were online.

    A study that "investigates whether the use of pseudonyms mitigates gender-based


    differences of communication patterns in a computer-mediated communication (CMC)
    context" was submitted for presentation to the 45th Annual Conference of the
    International Communication Association, 1995. Gender, Pseudonyms, and CMC:
    Masking Identities and Baring Souls by J. Michael Jaffe, Young-Eum Lee, Lining Huang,
    & Hayg Oshagan is an interesting look at how the use of nicks and the lack of non-
    verbal cues affect gender-based communication patterns.

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