Are Gender Differences A Myth?
Men and women might not be that different after all.
I was mad at my husband. Boiling mad. And I wanted to get even. Dave was born during the great depression of 1982 and hates to waste money. He is the only 25 year old I know who reuses plastic sandwich bags. So, I got him where I knew it would hurt. I walked through the house and turned on every light in the house. Flashlights. Stove lights. Closet lights. Everything. And then I sat on the couch waited for him to notice. Over the next 20 minutes, my husband walked through the house slowly turning off every light. Then he ate a cookie and went to bed.
When I explained my passive-aggressive failure to my mom she said, "Oh honey, men and women are just wired different." But according to Dr. Janet Hyde a professor at the University of Wisconsin, the differences in how my husband and I approach a conflict may not be attributable to gender.
"There are widespread views that there are big gender differences in communication skills and communication styles and that have been fostered by John Gray’s Mars Venus book…but in fact the differences are tiny," says Hyde.
Dr. Hyde asserts what she calls the "Gender Similarities Hypothesis," which was published in the September 2005 issue of The American Psychologist. Explains Hyde, "The Gender Similarities Hypothesis states that men and women are very similar on most but not all psychological variables, which is so different from the prevailing view that there are massive gender differences in dozens and dozens of psychological characteristics. But when you really look at the evidence it shows a very different picture."
According to the Gender Similarities Hypothesis, many of the stereotypical differences between men and women are moot. Hyde's research found that not only do men and women communicate in similar ways, but that there is minimal difference between male and female self esteem. "This is really important," Hyde says, "because self-esteem affects the way we approach our relationships."
She also discovered that there is also very little difference in nurturing tendencies between the sexes, and this characteristic is dependent upon the social context, for example, if there are onlookers. The same holds true for interrupting. Researchers have long thought that men interrupted more than women, but the differences can be minimal depending on the social context.
Despite these findings society seems to cling to the idea of these stereotypical differences. Notes Hyde in her article, "There are serious costs of over inflated claims of gender differences. These costs occur in many areas including work, family and relationships."
"If," Hyde explains, "men and women believe what they have been told—that it is almost impossible to communicate with each other—they may simply give up on trying to resolve the conflict through better communication."
Discussion
My GF and I are mixed stereo-types. That is, she was raised in a house that really wasn't very nurturing or expressive of emotion in any way. In my house it wasn't too often that you didn't hear my younger brother cry out to my parents to get a room...they have always been very expressive of their feelings verbally and physically. So my GF tends to be quiet when it comes to matters of the heart (on everything else its just non-stop) and I can spout off like a preacher from the pulpitt. But I really, and I mean REALLY had to work hard at how I communicate with my lovers.
Biologically men and women may not be so different, but even in the article you've cited I noticed some omissions that are analagous to other material I've read regarding the differences in how men and women communicate. Men and women do sympathize, advise, and give support in roughly equal measures, but it isn't neccesarily done the same way. That is the fundamental difference. Where a woman may be voiceing her feelings about something simply because she wants to get support on how she feels, a man will usually interpret that as "she is looking for advice on how to fix a problem". On the flip side, men will most often internalize these things and only voice subject matter that they are looking for some help in finding a solution to the problem.
Most men don't do subtext so well. For us, since communication is usually used to come to a conclusion, we put everything out there that we feel is pertinent and don't worry about the rest. Its why men don't usually "get it" when they are speaking to their SO. These of course are generalizations, much like the report you've cited. More often then not, couples really just need to help each other learn how to communicate with each other.
