Reflections on Cross-Gender Interaction

During today's class, we learnt about how the use of English tends to be sexist at times. We also understood the differences in communication styles of men and women as well as the reasons and explanations behind these observed differences.

For starters, it is interesting to see that many words in the English language pertain to the male gender. For example; manpower, chairman, businessman, mankind and many more. On that note, we discussed on how the title of 'MS' was introduced during the 1970s as the female equivalent of 'MR'.

We also had an interesting discussion on the differences in the way men and women converse. For instance, men tend to talk more than women in the public sphere in a formal context. Women tend to overlap each other in their conversations and build upon the conversation of people in their group with few pauses as compared to conversations between men. In addition, Women also tend to be more engaged and involved in their conversations. Other interesting characteristics are that conversations between women are more relationship oriented compared to that of males which are information oriented. In terms of topic development during conversations, men tend to talk about more concrete subjects such as sports, cars, politics, money etc. Conversely, women tend to talk about 'softer' issues such as fashion, clothes, relationships, emotions, life etc.

We also learnt about the possible explanations for such differences in the conversational styles of men and women. This can be attributed firstly to Dominance theory which suggests differences in power between men and women as the main cause for such differences. Secondly, Deborah Tannen's Difference theory provides an insightful explanation that men and women tend to form different interpretive frames along nine dimensions. These includes intimacy-independence, rapport-report, problems-solutions. novice-expert etc.

In light of what I have learnt today, I think it is appropriate to conclude that conversations between men and women are a form of cross-cultural communication too. This is because there are significant differences and polarities in the ways that men and women interpret and form their views and perceptions towards each other in their everyday interactions. Hence, it is important to develop respect, sensitivity and genuine understanding as similarly required in cross-cultural communication when interacting and communicating with the opposite sex. This would prevent any unnecessary misunderstandings and arguments and ultimately lead to more enjoyable conversations between men and women.