Equal Couples

Here’s an interesting item.  Over the last decades real differences between women and men have decreased on a variety of measures–math scores, sports participation, graduate school enrollment.  But as neuroscientist Lise Eliot points out in Pink Brain Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Trouble Gaps, society’s beliefs about the differences between the genders has actually GROWN. She reports that  people today perceive greater differences between women and men now than in the 1970s!!

All the talk about men and women being “hard-wired” differently and coming from different “planets” affects what we expect of ourselves and our partners.  This fascination with differences exaggerates differences in ways that make them real and limit life options and how we relate to each other.  Acording to Elliot’s comprehensive review of the data, boys and girls are born with only very small biological differences.  But we tend to treat them as though the differences are huge. This affects what we learn about ourselves and what we do. Many couples build relationships based on exaggerated notions of difference.

When Rik Rusovick and I studied young couples in the attraction stage of new relationships, we found that many of these couples (Californians all under 30) juggled conflicting notions of gender as they told us their stories of their relationships. Nearly all adamantly expected their relationships to be equal. But at the same time a number of them explained their relationship patterns based on the notions like “men and women communicate differently.” These couples seemed to celebrate gender differences with no apparent awareness of how those differences contribute to unequal relationships. 

For example, Ann,  a woman in the study said, “We’re equal. We just do our own thing.” Her partner Randy said, ” I like that she lets me play a male role. . . I wanna wear the pants.” Couples who believed in this two-planet model of equality accepted that men and women communicate differently. They want mutual understanding, but accept that men are not as good at this as women. None of the couples in the study had children. One can only imagine how their relationships could become skewed as each partner persists in “doing their own thing” when trying to raise children, and men step back because women “naturally” know how to handle kids.

The good news is that about half the couples in our study completely rejected traditional gender models as they told us about their attraction. They described being attracted because their partners did not act according to the stereotypes. For example, Emil and Paula described being attracted because of their relationship helped free them from the gender scripts for their culture. According to Paul, “I  love a good Hispanic girl that has ambitions.”

 Nearly all women and men in the study also spontaneously strongly resisted of the idea of male dominance. The challenge for the couples who believe in big gender differences is how to put this ideal into practice, since exaggerated gender differences also tend to perpetuate gender inequality.

Posted by Carmen Knudson-Martin

Last night we were working with a couple seeking to improve their relationship. The issue at hand was that when issues get tense the husband just leaves. Usually he goes off to his room and focuses on his computer. He explains that this is “his nature;” that he just doesn’t naturally tune into what’s going on with others.  His wife  ”understands” his character and holds back from expecting him to be someone he is not.  But the relationship is in trouble. She is tired to being left to carry the relationship burden.

Stonewalling, leaving, or tuning out of relationship is a common male relationship style. If you buy into the idea that this is just how men are, that they come from Mars and need to go to their caves, there is little hope of creating an equal, mutually supportive relationship—one in which both partners focus on each other and on maintaining the relationship.  Instead, women are left living in an emotional, relational world, while men live in a completely different world of independence and autonomy. The best we can do is understand and accept these differences.

A simple, but essential, step in creating a mutual relationship is to believe that change is possible; that men and women are not trapped by their  ”natures.”  So we asked them how the relationship would be different if “Johnny” changed his “habit” of not noticing what it’s like for her to be left holding the relationship ball.  Habits may take some work to change, but they do not define us.

The shift in the conversation was amazing! “Johnny” started to imagine that “Judy” would be less stressed; that he’d be less likely to withdraw from her, and that they would enjoy each other’s company more. He started picturing himself intentionally focusing on her—and liked the idea. He began to challenge his imagine of himself as someone not naturally good with “people skills.”

 The first step to change is challenging beliefs that gender differences are “hard-wired;” thinking, instead, of them as habits. The second step is experiementing with intentional change.

posted by Carmen

Thank you Lise Eliot!  Everywhere I go, otherwise knowledgeable persons routinely express the belief that the differences they observe between women and men are innate; that they are hard-wired into the brain and can not be changed. The trouble with this argument—besides being wrong—is that these so-called “natural” differences are used to justify gender inequalities.  Eliot’s new book, Pink Brain Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps—and What We Can Do About It, dispells this myth in the very first chapter.

According to Eliot, the myth arises from a misunderstanding of neuroscience. First, claims such as that men are wired for aggression and women for communication or that women are naturally more verbal than men are ”cherry-picked” from studies of adults but applied to children, or are extrapolated from studies of animals.  Secondly, the differences that may exist are small and best explained by the interaction of the brain with the enviroment.  In other words, our brains are created by what we do.  They evolve in response to experience. This “plasticity”  is the basis for all learning.

There are some truly innate genetic and hormonal differences, but Eliot points out that the male-female differences that really matter are heavily shaped by learning.  Our cultural propensity to exaggerating gender stereotypes is harmful to both women and men and makes  relationships difficult for all the reasons we’ve noted in other posts.

 Eliot’s book is really important. I will be requiring it in my gender classes from now on. The book confronts  the myth of innate gender differences with solid science and challenges us to do better. This is needed now more than ever, because as Elliot points out, in the last twenty years fascination with exaggerated claims regarding sex differences has grown. And what we believe about the basis for such differences has important personal and political consequences.

Posted by Carmen