Oldal 92 [92]
IZOLDA TAKÁCS: THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
acceptable. She has — guoting psychological and psycho-linguistic experiments
— elaborated for example how men and women practice different strategies in
their thinking patterns and communication. She claims that women are born
with the trait of considering the establishment of relationships and friendships
to be paramount. She states that this can even be observed in kindergarten,
where:
Girls share secrets, toys, etc. with each other, whereas boys already start competing,
fighting with each other, creating a hierarchy from the get-go. Not only in terms of
having an alpha male, but a complete set of subordinations, a pecking order below
that. With boys, the aim of every single act of communication is to figure out who can
reach a dominant position. And this applies to their relationship toward women as
well. If a couple gets lost, for example, it is always the female asking which the right
way is, a male would never ask that, because that would render him in a subordinate
position. (Subject no. 4, social sciences)
Tannen sums up the assumed differences between men and women in her
infamously heavily criticised book You Just Don’t Understand, which are di¬
vided into six groups. The thoughts presented in the book all manifest them¬
selves to a degree with every single interviewee belonging to this type, the
members of which tend to group male and female characteristics and traits in
a fundamentally similar way. Tannen has contrasted the fundamental otherness
of the two genders with the help of categories she invented, thus creating op¬
position pairs like (1) independence (men) — intimacy (women), (2) advice (men)
— understanding (women), (3) information (men) — feelings (women), (4) status
(men) — support (women), (5) orders (men) — proposal (women) as well as (6)
conflict (men) — compromise (women). Tannen presents men as more inde¬
pendent and competing with each other, whereas women prefer intimacy and
sentiments. Furthermore, men often apply confrontation as the instrument
for reaching a solution to an argument or other situations, thereby conveying
and shaping their social status.*”’ The opposites listed above can be added to
the series of well-known, ossified binary oppositions associated with gender
(like women: sensitivity, empathy, matter, body, irrationality, versus men: mind,
logos, form, leader, logic, rationality). And if we assume the characteristics and
traits associated with stereotypes regarding men are much more applicable to
the image of a leader, we can explain why the majority of women (and men
alike) think a leadership role is something fundamentally not for women.
271 Tannen, D.: You Just Don’t Understand. Women and Men in Conversation, London, Virago
Press, 1991.
* 90 ¢