Gender and Competition

To help everyone understand a few difference between men and women that I've learned over the past few years, I want to share with you two key ideas from Gender and Competition: How Men and Women Approach Work and Play Differently by Kathleen J. DeBoer. This book has helped me communicate much more effectively with both genders.

Obviously, this is still a sensitive topic to many because in it's politically incorrect to discuss the differences between men and women. I believe men and women deserve equal treatment under law and should have equal opportunities, however, they are significantly different. To maximize the competitive potential of both genders, we must discard the value judgements that these differences are bad and look to a larger social context to explain behavior.

The following are experts from de Boer's book:

Gender Cultures

Males and females take different perspectives on the world. The experiences that shape values, the situations that cause fear, and the circumstances that define success stand distinct. Author Nancy Chodorow indicates "nearly universal differences that characterize masculine and feminine personality and roles." At the heart of these differences lies a masculine identity defined by a basic sense of living separate from others as opposed to a feminine identity defined by a basic sense of living connected to others.

If this is true, each gender approaches competitive situations from vastly different contexts. Girls come to the gym seeking to bond as the means to success; boys battle to achieve the same thing. Women enter a workplace predisposed to connect to achieve goals; men compete to achieve goals. Both want to win and both want results, but they hold markedly different ideas on how to access their aspirations.

These disparate assumptions about the nature of reality lead to most of our common gender-related stereotypes. In sports, stereotypes perceive males as competitive, females as social; winning is critical to males, team chemistry to females.

We must show female athletes that we care about them as people, not just athletes. If we do that, they will struggle and sacrifice mightily to succeed (de Boer, page 17-24).

Values and Fears

Men learn to view the world as a hierarchical social order. They value autonomy, latitude, and winning. Females value attachment, intimacy, and interdependence. Males fear helplessness. They may be wary of commitment if they see it as a loss of freedom. Females fear rejection, isolation, and abandonment. They equate these conditions with loneliness and failure.

These values and fears dictate different patterns of behavior. The task orientation of males means they bond and form alliances through shared activity; the relationship orientation of females means they bond and form alliances through conversation. These preferences for action versus interaction are most obvious when observing the behavior of single gender groups.

Knowledge of this action/interaction difference matters not only for team-building, but is also crucial to understanding gender-biased preferences in activities. If self-esteem is tied to differentiation from others as in the male world, then activities that tend to separate are preferred, e.g., combative, singular, score-keeping activities. Whereas, if self-esteem is tied to integration with others as in the female world, then activities that tend to connect are preferred, e.g., social, collective, leveling activities (de Boer, pages 25-26).

I hope these two quick insights from de Boer's book help you to understand the importance of recognizing the differences between men and women and how they view competition differently. These two observations are simple, but require effort in application. It's worth it, though.