Unpacking the Gender-ification of Communication
Our daily lives, especially in college, are filled with communication. From getting morning coffee to running to a lecture to participating in clubs and playing sports to living with roommates and suitemates, our lives are saturated with verbal and nonverbal interactions that all inform the structure and tone of our days.
The other day in my Intro to Communications lecture, we were discussing the different ways in which communication can be “categorized” or “labeled.” Specifically, we were dissecting communication as it appears in organizations, groups, and teams. Sometimes the nonverbal and verbal ways we communicate with each other can favor a masculine tone. Most simple and obvious are traditional marriage titles. Whether it be a hyphen, taking our partner’s last name, or keeping our own, traditional titles that are still commonly used today nevertheless hold true to a masculine world. This trend tickles down to everyday banter, especially when it comes to competitive trash talk. Why is it that aggression and assertiveness are so often associated with masculinity? Yes, women have reclaimed the phrase “grow a pair” by associating it with ovaries instead of…well I think you know where I am going with it. But our lexicon still reeks of unfair associations and the masculinization of various words, phrases, and character traits. The worst part is how subconscious it has become to me. It took a class dissecting this language for me to fully grasp my unwitting participation.
If we take a big step back in order to understand the origins of this phenomenon, the bigger picture becomes clearer. As Julia Woods discusses in her book Communication Mosaics, historically, a lot of big businesses or corporations were built by men. Even though that is changing and the worlds inside of corporations, businesses, and colleges are becoming more diverse, a staggering majority of the Fortune 500 companies are still run by men. When the large corporations, businesses and colleges were first established, many women were forced to adapt and become “masculine” in order to make their mark or otherwise stagnate. There was not as much opportunity for women to work their way to the top. The cycle works like a feedback loop; what was built mostly by men has continued to be dominated by mostly men because (among multiple other reasons), many companies were started with men at top. Still today, women must constantly and continually create space for themselves in the business world and often have to hide 'signs of (feminine or any other kind of) weakness” in places that are mainly male-dominated or hold more of a masculine connotation.
Though it isn’t normal to talk about our internal affairs, I felt I had to mention how astounded I was by the way Coven began communicating with me when I first signed on, coincidentally the same day of this lecture. With words like “brilliance” and “eloquence” dotting email threads, I realized that how ingrained the notion was in me to communicate in a masculine manner in the workplace for fear of otherwise looking weak. I developed a masculinity – or rather, a femininity – issue because I thought I had to hype up one side of myself while suppressing the other in order to succeed.
At Coven, I was shown you can communicate and feel comfortable expressing every aspect of my personality in a professional setting. When I asked for help, the team encouraged me while also helping me solve problems. They make it okay to ask questions and not understand things, which in turn made me feel more open and comfortable talking to the people managing me at Coven.
The way we speak, act, and communicate stems from our past, and in the past, the business world was dominated a mainly male group. This of course can be applied to politics, finance, sports, and other fields previously (or currently) monopolized by men. Our language and communication styles may be male-derived because women were not given the rights to create and add to such discussions at the time. But now, in a world trying to create a more equal environment for all genders, our language has the opportunity to grow and adapt too.
Competition is healthy. Wanting to progress in a career is healthy. But labeling how we act as being more “masculine” it is where I find the act to be unhealthy. I find the tacit pressure placed on women to not show too many emotions or “weakness” in the workplace to be entirely frustrating. Emotions are human. Emotions are universal. Emotions should not be associated with this gender or that.
Just because our world was built by men does not mean we have to let our language and communication stall in unwitting toxic masculinity. If it’s us collegiate young adults that must mold the world into a place we want to enter (as many commencement speakers are sure to tell us), then why don’t we start working on a new style of communication where neither gender is slapped on to how we “must” communicate in order to “make it?”
By Harper Wayne
BU Student, self-published author, and an enthusiastic thrifter with a soft spot for rainy days.
Read More at:
“Communication Mosaics: an Introduction to the Field of Communication.” Communication Mosaics: an Introduction to the Field of Communication, by Julia T. Wood, Cengage Learning, 2017.