Men and women: Long live the difference 57related to language. Women use both hemispheres of the brain to process information, and they
are more communicative and creative in their thinking. Women are able to multitask, to carry out
preplanned tasks, and to tune into speciic stimuli, such as a baby crying at night.
5 Until recently, boys and girls were usually raised from early childhood to fullil distinct roles
in many cultures. hese traditional gender roles of leader/hunter/protector and nurturer/
caretaker/homemaker have their roots in tribal, agrarian, or nomadic societies where survival
depended on the speciic functions that men and women performed. Human society, however, is
not static, and as everyday living became less survival-oriented through economic, social, and
technological progress, strictly deined gender roles that worked in the past were no longer neces-
sary or appropriate. In the Western world, feminism and the women’s liberation movement of the
1960s and 1970s, coupled with universally accessible birth control and legalized abortion, gave
women the choice to reproduce or not and freed them from the stereotypes a largely male-
dominated society had imposed on them.
6 Social roles can change; biological roles cannot. As a result, men, who were generally com-
fortable with the status quo, and women, who began demanding more autonomy, equality, and
opportunity, were inding themselves at odds. In the 1960s, the “battle of the sexes” began, and as
divorce rates of around 50 percent in some countries would indicate, it is still raging.
7 In his best-selling book published in 1992, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus,rela-
tionship therapist John Gray accounts for the conlicts between men and women by suggesting
that they come from diferent planets,^1 speak completely diferent languages, and require diferent
kinds of emotional nourishment. In addition to how they think and feel, men and women “per-
ceive, react, respond, love, need, and appreciate diferently.” Gray identiies 12 areas in which men
and women difer: values,coping with stress, motivation, improving relationships, language,
need for intimacy, loving attitudes and feelings, love, arguments, keeping score, communication,
and asking for support. Seven of these are summarized as follows:
◆ValuesMen (Mr. Fix-It) ofer solutions to problems; women (Mrs. Home Improvement Com-
mittee) volunteer advice. When a woman talks about a problem, she wants a man to listen and
sympathize. Because she wants to help, a woman ofers a man unsolicited advice, which he
takes as disapproval or a lack of trust in his competence. Women complain that men never
listen. Men object to women always trying to change them.
◆Coping with stressUnder stress, men focus and “go into their caves,” where they work things
out for themselves. Women feel emotionally overwhelmed and need to talk about their feel-
ings. When a man goes into his cave, the woman feels shut out, because she senses that some-
thing is wrong and wants to be included. When a woman complains about a problem, she is
getting things of her chest, but a man will think that she is either looking for advice or blaming
him for the problem.
◆Motivation Men are motivated when they feel needed, whereas women are motivated when
they feel cherished. Because success is important to men, they want to make their partners
happy. If a man doesn’t feel needed, trusted, or appreciated, he shuts of. Because a woman
values empathy, compassion, and attention more than solutions, she needs a man to show that
he cares. When men can overcome their fear of not being good enough, they can give love.
When women overcome their fear of being abandoned, they can receive love.
◆Language Even though men and women may use the same words, they do not mean the
same thing. Women are given to exaggeration (“I can’t do anything” or “We never go out”), and
they use superlatives, generalizations, and metaphors that men, who are more direct, factual,
and concise, will take literally (“hat’s ridiculous” or “We went out last Friday”). As a result,
women complain that they are not being heard, when in fact men are hearing them but not
decoding their messages properly. A man misunderstands a woman’s words; she misinterprets
(^1) he planets Mars and Venus were named, respectively, for the Roman god of war and goddess of love.