Differences Between Men and Women
In Dave Barry’s “Batting Clean-up and Striking Out”, as well as Deborah Tannen’s “But What Do You Mean?”, many differences between men and women are discussed. While it’s obvious that men and women are physically and biologically different, these differences also extend to the brain (Jantz, 2014). I believe that the differences between males and females in how they communicate, how they clean and how their hobbies differ can be explained by both socialization as well as biological differences between the two sexes. I will explain my beliefs of these differences in the following paragraphs.
In terms of communication, Tannen (1994) states that women more frequently say thank you than men do. (p.381) Whenever a thank you is not reciprocated, Tannen (1994) says that women are often left feeling put down. Women have been socialized to feel inferior to men (Kimberling & Ouimette,
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Going back to my previous point about the socialization of women as housekeepers, this makes sense. If women are socialized to be focused on household details and men are socialized to be the resource providers, then it would make sense that their interests would be different as well. Because men are often portrayed as the one who keeps the family afloat financially and does not take as much interest in the home, it follows that their interests for their free time would be outside the home. Futher more, in looking at biological differences between men and women, we can see more why men are interested in sports than women are. First, while men are more aggressive than women are (Jantz, 2014) and this might be one reason for their interest in sports, this might also be explained from an evolutionary perspective. Essentially, if men take an interest in and play sports, they might able to acquire status as a mate by being more physically fit (Bering,
In the infamous article “Batting Clean-up and Striking Out” by Dave Barry, the focus is on gender stereotypes, specifically the stereotypes such as women like to clean and men like sports. I can personally say I fit into this, because I enjoy cleaning, to an extent, but I think this stereotype can only go so far. I know my sister doesn’t like cleaning and my father outright hates sports, so they don’t fit into this. I find the generalizations highly annoying, because people sometimes expect me to just clean for them when I don’t want to; they use the stereotype as an excuse for me to do so. I know my father has encountered plenty of other men that have tried to persuade him to watch a football or other sports game with them and I can’t imagine
Society has always had the idea that males should participate in masculine activities and females in feminine activities. These activities define the lifestyle that person would have. It was also believed that if a male was not involved in masculine activities, that male was not a man. Sports is a field that has been dominated by males in the past years, and more recently has had a lot of females take part in it. But does playing a sport define one’s masculinity? Michael Messner, the author of Boyhood, Organized Sports, and the Construction of Masculinities, discusses the effect sports has on upcoming young men of different races. The effect of being introduced to a sport at a young age allowed males of different races to gain a sense of masculinity,
There is so much gender inequality that women are expected to feel grateful when called “chairman” and “you
Society stereotypes women in almost all social situations, including in the family, media, and the workplace. Women are often regarded as being in, “Second place” behind men. However, these stereotypes are not typically met by the modern day woman....
In a society where gender disparity and equality are seemingly discarded, a status quo between men and women is very crucial. Therefore, the respect for women by the society can only be earned upon adopting some masculine techniques of doing things. Communication is one such technique that various authors have proposed as a distinct method of ensuring gender equality. For example, Deborah Tannen is one such author who has contributed to this discussion and holds a point of convergence: male and female gender applies to different communication styles. In addition, the author is of the opinion that women can only gain an equal status to their male peers only if they adopt direct communication styles, which include giving orders and exercising authority.
Since the development of civilization, women have always been viewed as subordinate to men in all aspects of life. This is especially true in regards to the communication styles of both sexes. The expository text “ His Politeness is Her Powerlessness” by Deborah Tannen and Charlotte Bronte’s gothic novel, Jane Eyre, demonstrates a shocking similarity between the 1820s and the 21st century in regards to men’s view point on women’s style of communication. According to the texts, women will always be viewed as the inferior sex regardless of their communication style.
For the most part, women are considered prominent over men, which causes women to act in a certain behavior in which will function to get them to events such as frat parties. In today’s society, women are constructed to act well mannered to which they greatly differ from men. According to the Women's Sports Foundation, they claim that paying men more for the same sport gives women in the sport less incentive to push themselves and discourages future female participation in the sport. Which is true, why would women want to play the same sport as men and get paid less money?
Introduction The topic of gender differences must understandably be approached with caution in our modern world. Emotionally charged and fraught with ideas about political correctness, gender can be a difficult subject to address, particularly when discussed in correlation to behavior and social behavior. Throughout history, many people have strove to understand what makes men and women different. Until the modern era, this topic was generally left up to religious leaders and philosophers to discuss. However, with the acquisition of more specialized medical knowledge of human physiology and the advent of anthropology, we now know a great deal more about gender differences than at any other point in history.
In her article “But What Do You Mean” Deborah Tannen, claims that there is a huge difference in the style of communicating between men and women. Tannen breaks these down into seven different categories; apologies, criticism, thank-yous, fighting, praise, complaints, and jokes. With each of these she compares men to women by explaining the common misconceptions that each of the genders do. The different style of communication can cause some problems at the workplace and even affect the environment. The different styles of communication has been around forever and almost becomes a “ritual”(299). Tannen is effective with mainly women and not men. She is primarily successful with women due to the fact that her tone targets women, also the organization
Women and men play various sports because they as Americans want to experience the excitement of playing for fun, and doing something they love. The idea of what men and women can do for fun in sports has been shaped by the American society in many different ways through the media, schooling and education, and professional sports organizations. America portrays women playing field hockey and doing synchronized swimming while men do boxing, and body building. If a woman chooses to do boxing because to her it is fun and if a man chooses synchronized swimming because he likes it, they face many cultural costs and benefits of choosing this sport. Society does not like change and holds female athletes up to ideals such as being beautiful, graceful, and healthy. Male athletes are held to ideals such as strong, aggressive, and powerful. People who choose to play non-traditional sports risk being judged by society as unnatural and homosexual, instead of being viewed as an athlete who is special and unique, they are often subjected to unwanted sexual advances and assumptions. The benefit of doing an untraditional sport is that you are able to do something you love. As a result of people who do non-traditional sports, they open the doors for future generations of women and men who might want do play an non-traditional sport.
Sports, in general, are a male dominated activity; every “real” male is suppose to be interested and/or involved in sports in the American society. However, it is not expected of a female to be interested in sports and there is less pressure on them to participate in physically enduring activities. These roles reflect the traditional gender roles imposed on our society that men are supposed to be stronger and dominant and females are expected to be submissive. As Michael Kimmel further analyzes these gender roles by relating that, “feminism also observes that men, as a group, are in power. Thus with the same symmetry, feminism has tended to assume that individually men must feel powerful” (106).
Communication is an essential part of human life. People perceive things in a different way because of ethnic background differences, attitudes and beliefs, etc. These differences may affect our ability to communicate with our counterpart. Therefore, it is necessary to keep our mind open so that we can reduce the risk of communication breakdown. Men and women are different as everyone knows that. However, their differences are no just physiological and anatomical. Recent researches have concluded that there are remarkable differences between the two genders in the way their brains process information, language, emotion, cognition etc. Scientists have discovered the differences in the way men and women carry out mental functions like judging speed, estimating time, spatial visualization and positioning, mental calculation. Men and women are strikingly different not only in these tasks but also in the way their brains process language. This could account for the reason why there are overwhelmingly more male mathematicians, pilots, mechanical engineers, race car drivers and space scientists than females. On the other hand, there are areas in which women outperform men. Women are naturally endowed with better communication and verbal abilities. They are also effective than men in some of the tasks like emotional empathy, establishing human relations, carrying out pre-planned tasks and creative expressions (Kimura 1999).
It is proven that the male and female brains differ, but can one prove that it affects the behavior? Many scientists would agree that ones behavior is determined by his/her gender. Although others are convinced that social conditioning is the cause for the differences between the male and female, it is very unlikely that biological differences play no role in behavior. The male and female brains differ not only by how they work, but also on the size. For example, Natalie Angier and Kenneth Chang, neuroscientists, have shown that the women’s brain is about 10 percent smaller than the male’s, on average, even after accounting for women’s comparatively smaller body size. Three brain differences that affect ones behavior are the limbic size, the corpus collosum size, and the amount of gray and white matter.
Society has females and males alike typecasted into roles which have basic characteristics that are the reverse of each other. Although this has begun to change over the past thirty years, typically the man was seen as superior to the female. This superior image is one that today, is slowly on its way to being reduced to one of complete equality between the two genders.
Leo, J. (2000). Brain Structure Explains Male/Female Differences. Male/female roles: opposing viewpoints (pp. 32-34). San Diego, Calif.: Greenhaven Press.