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During a gender communication seminar, one woman raised her hand.
“Do men feel?” she asked.
The audience burst out laughing. The question was obviously a joke, but the underlying message was not. Of course men have emotions. But what the woman meant was, “Why don’t men express their feelings?” Well, they do. Men just express their feelings differently. First of all, they have more control over their facial expressions, where most feelings are communicated. They have emotional control reflected by a neutral expression or by masking facial expressions. Women are what experts call high-expressers and externalizers, whereas men are low-expressers and internalizers.
Society conditions women to think they are the emotional gender. Women are taught a separate set of rules that allow a wider range of self-expression. Women aren’t as good at hiding their facial expressions; you can often read them like a book (helpful when women say they’re “fine” but feel the opposite). With men, it’s more of a guessing game.
Self-expression isn’t purely learned. The different brains are also at work. According to Morgan Road in her book The Female Brain, “The areas of the brain that track emotion are larger and more sensitive in the female brain.” Men notice subtle signs of sadness in a face only 40 percent of the time, whereas women pick up on the signs 90 percent of the time, Road says.
Imagine how life would be if we lost our ability to express our emotions. A man in the same gender communication seminar said, “Work would be less messy if people could just leave their feelings and emotions on the sidewalk before they came into work.” Which is true? An emotionless workplace would be free of fear, boredom, frustration, and hurt feelings. But this pain-free existence would have a trade-off. We’d also forfeit happiness, joy, enthusiasm, and pride major motivators and rewards.
I am not saying that the way men do it is right and women should model that behavior. We do not want women to become men; rather as women we should embrace our attributes and incorporate communication behaviors that meet the need of the immediate context. As women, we do not want to throw the baby out with the bath water. The goal is to incorporate both women’s and men’s talents and skills.
Women can embrace their ability as a high-expresser and externalizer. An emotionless workplace is a dull workplace. The office would not be ignited by passion and joy. People would become bored. The office atmosphere would be over-run with monotony. When you are expressive, people also know where you stand. This, in turn, increases their comfort level and feeling of familiarity. We are always suspect of the people we can’t seem to get to know. They won’t let us in, so what are they hiding?
