There are, undoubtedly, differences in the way men and women approach problem-solving. (Whether this is cultural or genetic is often debated – it’s probably a bit of both). I have mentioned these differences already – and I will expand on them a little now.
‘Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus’ was a popular book of the 1990’s, written by a man named John Gray. The stated purpose of the book was to assist women and men in problem-solving and conflict-resolution in their relationships.
It proposed that men used methods that we usually associate with characteristics of the planet Mars (in mythology the God of War – very logical) and women use those we associate with Venus (the Goddess of Love – very emotional).
When I was thinking about the differences between Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Person Centred Therapy, I thought of the book – in particular one of the messages from the book; that we men like to offer solutions and women want us to listen, and vice-versa.
The book has often been challenged (and indeed I was a bit sceptical of some of it myself) but it is true that, in general, most people believe (and we will go along with this belief here just for the exercise) that, typically, when solving a problem, a man tends to deny the emotion underlying it whereas a woman revels in it.
I was reading someone’s life story recently and the writer said that the person who was the subject of the story ‘was brought up under the firm hand of his father and the loving care of his mother’. It struck me how familiar that kind of statement sounded to me.
It doesn’t mean that Mammy can’t have a firm hand or that Daddy can’t offer loving care – it just points to the dominant characteristics of each parent. Daddy, typically, avoids emotions – the firm hand – because he’s not really hard-wired – there’s that electronic word again – to be emotional, whereas Mammy offers loving care because she is.
Maybe there’s something about the root foundation time here too. Men don’t value emotionality in general so perhaps they don’t have time to be getting emotional. Women do value emotionality, so time is almost irrelevant when comes to being emotional. (This might explain the wait-till-your-father-gets-home stuff).
Very often, the woman will be too caught up in the emotional interaction to be the planner, strategic thinker, problem solver. She (traditionally anyway) teaches that humans have emotions and the man teaches the more rational skills of living.
So while the classical male way of solving human problems is to do it logically, (fully confident that the application of logic will make a difference), the classical female method is to get emotional about it, (fully confident that getting emotional will change things).
Of course, as I will argue in the following post, both are of equal value, and whether we are male or female, we all lie somewhere along the continuum of very emotional – very logical.