Men and women grow up in a mixed gender society interacting in daily life with each other since childhood. Unfortunately, men and women communicate and respond in different ways. They talk, listen, and act differently, as Tannen’s essay depicted. Gender difference creates some major misunderstandings and even arguments while non-gender factors, such as personality, culture background are also influential.
When it comes to money, men are often seen as “the best investors” and women are thought as the “carefree spenders”. Money conflict widely spread in male-female relationships. As breadwinners, most men believe that women are crazy shoppers. They buy whatever they like instead of what they need. Women take money as a means to create and improve daily life. They enjoy visible changes brought through spending money such as a new dress or jewelries, which make them feel good. On the contrary, men view money as seed to generate and accumulate more value. So they invest in proper ways to make maximal profit, such as bonds, stocks, house or retirement. They enjoy the snowball effects of investment, which therefore satisfies their egos. In addition, many women overloaded money with more meanings than money itself carries in an intimate relationship, including love, concern, dependency and even security. For instance, the fact that a man fails to send his girlfriend or fiancé a dozen rose or an expensive diamond ring could naturally be translated by some women as “He is stingy. He does not love me or care about me because he is reluctant to spend money on me.” It proves the saying that women are sophisticated and illogical; and men are linear and straightforward.
Unfortunately, men are not always hoarders. In many families, men advocate spending thousands of dollars on yacht or personal helicopter to enjoy life while women are the savers for later life and children’s education. Apparently, genetically encoded gender difference does not always work though men generally deal with money issue much better than their female counterparts.
When confronted with a problem, women will often talk it out, while men are reluctant to do so. Many women believe that men do not like communicating with them rather than that man and women speak different languages. One of common communication conflicts happens when a family problem or argument emerges. It is not difficult to find the wife keeps talking about the problem while the husband is taciturn. Talking is not only an effective way to release stress and pressures for women, but also a process to build up relationship and find out a snap solution easily. In contrast, men tend to be more introspective about problems and choose to deal with them internally and independently. If men have to talk, they typically just give information or report on events, things of the day’s happenings. They’d love to be left alone and figure out the solution as if they imprison themselves in a cave as described in Gray’s book Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Frustrated wives usually complain they do not understand what men really mean and start to suspect their relationship is going wrong.
Regarding of willingness, communication style between men and women is quite different too. Women are basically more concentrated on details of description whereas men focus on the overall generalization and summarization. Women are more enthusiastic communicators, using mail, email, phone in a more robust way. Not only sending and receiving more mail, email and phone call than men, women are more likely to write to family and friends about a variety of topics, joys and worries, planning events. This is an effective way for women to build up and reinforce their relationship with others. Men, on the contrary, are more likely to talk with their buddies some big topics including sports, politics, and economy. They barely share their problems with others unless they did not care to be viewed as losers.
Not surprisingly, communication as a social activity is influenced by people’s personality, education and cultural background. Many introverted women do not like or are not good at communicating with others. They are quiet, reflective and prefer listening more than talking. They process information internally and respond carefully and thoughtfully. They have their own approaches to communicate with others.
In the large picture, it is noted that gender differences does not exist in a vacuum. It is part of the cultural, economical, belief system of society in which it exists. Therefore, gender differences are inevitably impacted by these external factors and interacted with them as well. As an individual, one’s behavior is a consequence of both intrinsic and extrinsic infuences.
