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