Gender Communication

What is Gender Communication?

• It is an aspect of communication that focuses on the way

we communicate, as it is influenced by gender roles or
gender perception in our society and environment.
• Gender plays a role in communication: how it is heard or
understood may change depending on who is speaking,
who is being spoken to, or where it is being spoken at.
• There are also cues in communication that define or
determine if a message or way of communicating is
female (feminine) or male (masculine).
How is gender communicated?

• Gender is a learned communication behavior, opposite

from sex which is biological.
• It can sometimes be influenced by language, culture and
society, environment, and other factors.
• It is also influenced by the role that men or women have
played in (their) society in the past.
GENDERED
LANGUAGE
• In a survey of some languages from around the world, among
the 256 languages that were analyzed - 112 have
grammatical gender while 144 are genderless.
• Genderless languages have no distinctions of grammatical
gender when using pronouns, nouns, adjectives or verbs.
• Grammatical gender is found in many Indo-European
languages, Afroasiatic languages, and in other language
families
• Grammatical gender is usually absent from the Koreanic,
Japonic, Tungusic, Turkic, Mongolic, Austronesian, Sino-
Tibetan, Uralic and most Native American language families.
Cultural examples of Gendered or Non-gendered Terms
• In some languages, the use of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and
verbs, can differ based on one's gender.

• In Japanese, Watashi means I and is a gender-neutral

terminology, but the terms boku or ore are generally reserved for
boys. The use of ore gives off an image of a rough person/male.

• In English, we use he or she to refer to someone based on

gender. In Chinese Mandarin, ta refers to either male or female or
it, but changes the way it is written based on who is being referred
to (他/ /它)
Cultural examples of Gendered or Non-gendered Terms

• In Greek, helios or the sun, is considered a male. While

selene or the moon, is a female. But in German, the sun
sonne is female, and the moon mond is considered male.

• In Spanish, the word for cat changes depending on the

gender: gato for male (or as a general term) and gata for
female.

• Determiners can also become gender-specific: In Spanish,

El such as El Nino is used for males, while La in La Nina is
used specifically for females.
Cultural examples of Gendered or Non-gendered Terms

• In English, doctor is
genderless; but in
languages such as
Spanish or Tagalog, we
become gender
specific by calling male
doctors doktor and
female doctors as
doktora.
• How we communicate and how we think must be
understood within the concept of “thought as influenced
by language”.

“We dissect nature along lines laid by our own language.

[…] the world is presented as a kaleidoscope flux of
impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and
this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds.”

- The Whorfian Hypothesis

 GENDERED
PERCEPTION
• The way men and women communicate in society has
been greatly influenced by the perception of gender over
the last few centuries.

• There are expectations of how men and women should

talk/communicate. Expressing yourself a certain way can
be considered masculine or feminine, gay or tomboy,
normal or weird. These are based on traditional, and often
outdated and narrow-minded perceptions of gender roles
and gender communication.
For example, how women should dress--an expression of non-
verbal communication--has changed immensely over the last
few centuries. In the saying “who wears the pants in the family”,
it is assumed that men wear the pants as women are expected
to wear dresses and skirts. Yet today's modern women wear
whatever they want: whether it's pants or long skirts, suits or
overalls, heels or flats or sneakers.

It's also used as comedy in some forms of media that Scottish

men wear skirts, yet kilts are a sign of Gaelic culture and
traditions that date back centuries.
Emotions are traditionally considered a sign of being a
woman -- following the idea that females are dramatic and
tend to overreact because of hormones. Men who show
emotion, such as crying, are sometimes labelled as 'soft'
and told to act like “real men”.

But aggression is typically seen as a male emotion.

Sometimes so much so that when men act out their
aggressive tendencies, it is seen as a normal thing they
would do.
Women are seen as being easier to communicate with, so roles
and responsibilities that require person-to-person interaction
generally are given or assigned to women. Roles in call centers,
secretarial jobs, and even in service industries, are generally
dominated by women. Bank tellers are usually female, so are
cashiers in stores, or sales assistants at shops. Even with the
word nurse, what immediately comes to mind is usually a
woman.

Yet in the cooking industry, even if women are perceived as the

ones who cook in their homes, men dominate the kitchen as
(professional) chefs.
Because of society's traditional perceptions, even in a modern
society there are stereotypes when it comes to understanding
the way men and women communicate:
- In a workplace setting, men who order people around are
called leaders, but women who do the same are called bossy.
- Men who have many female friends are called friendly. Yet
with women who have many male friends, they are either called
“one of the boys” or flirty.
- There is no term for older men who date much younger
women, but older women who date younger men are called
“cougars”.
• Top Three Communication
Strengths For Females:
1. Ability to read body language and
pick up nonverbal cues.
2. Good listening skills.
3. Effective display of empathy.
• Top Three Communication
Weaknesses For Females:
1. Overly emotional.
2. Meandering – won’t get to the point.
3. Not authoritative.
• Top Three Communication
Strengths For Males:
1. Commanding physical presence.
2. Direct and to-the-point interactions.
3. Effective display of power.
• Top Three Communication
Weaknesses For Males:
1. Overly blunt and direct.
2. Insensitive to audience reactions.
3. Too confident in own opinion.
The idea that men and women are different and still in some
societies--not equal, is based on years of patriarchial
leadership in almost all parts of the world.

Books such as Men are from Mars and Women are from
Venus, or articles that claim that women's and men's brains
are not the same size, all help develop and reinforce the
ideas and stereotypes that men and women do fit into
standardized and (almost) universal checkboxes.
The idea of gender perception is something not just applied to
adults, but is cultivated in us even at a very young age. The idea
that baby boys wear blue, and baby girls wear pink, is still widely
practiced in today's society; even with slogans like “Real Men
Wear Pink” that try to break down those stereotypes.

Little girls are expected to go to dance and ballet classes and like
playing with dolls, while boys go for karate classes and usually
like to play with dinosaurs and trains.

Children who don't fit into these so-called standards, are often
called out for being weird and different.
Sources:
• Yasir Suleiman (ed.) (1999) "Language and Society in the Middle East and
North Africa", ISBN 0-7007-1078-7, Chapter 10: "Gender in a genderless
language: The case of Turkish", by Friederike Braun
• (eds.), Martine Vanhove ... (2012). Morphologies in Contact. Berlin:
Akademie Verlag Berlin. p. 97. ISBN 978-3050057019.
• Corbett, Greville G. (1991). Gender. Cambridge University Press.
• Venditti, P. (n.d.). Introduction to Communication. Retrieved from
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/introductiontocommunication/chapter/cha
pter-13-overview/
• Goman, C. K. (2016, March 31). Is Your Communication Style Dictated By
Your Gender? Retrieved from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolkinseygoman/2016/03/31/is-your-
communication-style-dictated-by-your-gender/.
Sources:
• Cameron, D. (2007, October 1). Do men and women speak the
same language? Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/01/gender.books.
• Benjamin Lee Whorf, 1956: Language, Thought, and Reality. MIT
Press, Cambridge MA.
• http://semantics.uchicago.edu/kennedy/classes/sum07/myths/myt
hs4-gender.pdf
• Nelson, Ph.D., A. (2016, June 24). Gender Communication: It's
Complicated. Retrieved from
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/he-speaks-she-
speaks/201606/gender-communication-it-s-complicated.