Chapter 7: Gender Differences at Work

This was completely new to me, I never really new that there was gender differences at work. I have always heard and read about how men and women communicate in interpersonal relationships, but nothing like this. As Deborah Tannen (1994) explains, "men seek status by engaging in report talk...women use conversations to build relationships using rapport talk" (pg. 204). In every job that I've had, except for the one that I have at this moment, I have always worked with women only. My current job that I have now, I only work with one male, he's one of my supervisors. I think this whole concept is interesting because the authors make such a distinguishment between male employees and women employees. For some reason, I get the impression that the authors make the women employees sound "weak, "(I may be wrong), but they when they describe male employees they describe them as not so "needy." Another thing that I thought was interesting was what Linda Babcock and Sara Lashever had to say, they "argue that women need to follow the assertive man's lead and ask for what they deserve." I'm not really understanding what they mean by this.