Gender differences

As already observed by Hidalgo Tenorio (1997), there has been a wide range of studies devoted to the subject of gender in the field of English linguistics. R. Lakoff (1975), the undoubted doyenne of this research, suggests, as almost all her follow-ers do, the existence or construction of a linguistic stereotype, which sometimes contrasts with the empirical evidence. Therefore, it is interesting to carry out a study in which gender differences are analysed in this particular context.

According to Rubin (1970) and Harper et al. (1994), women tend to maintain more eye-contact than men. Rubin (1970) concludes that women who score high on affiliative tendency have also more eye-contact. Furthermore, Harper et al.

(1994:230) explain that ‘Sex differences in eye-contact can be summarized rather simply: women look in the direction of their conversational partners more than men and, logically, participate in more mutual gaze during interaction.’

Bente et al. (1998) conclude that there are important differences between men’s and women’s gaze behaviour. They explain that (1998:53–4):

Men showed much more variation in gaze behavior and much shorter gaze pe-riods than women …  In contrast to the male interactants, female interactants showed prolonged gaze during the partner’s speech, while males tended to look away from their partner, even when she was speaking.

Similarly, Dodd et al. (2010:1) cite Bayliss, di Pellegrino and Tipper (2005) who report ‘gender differences in the magnitude of gaze-cuing effects, with females exhibiting larger cuing effects’.

However, the results of our study show that men, in general, maintained more eye-contact than women (18.50 vs. 14.38) and women used many more glances than men (7.23 vs. 3.48).

Additionally, women also made use of more regulators than men (7.23 vs.

3.48). These data are shown in Figure 7, where political allegiance is not taken into account. In other words, the data show men’s and women’s behaviour without tak-ing into account the political party they belong to.

18.50

As mentioned above, men usually kept more eye-contact than women. However, as shown in Figures 8 and 9, this is only the case when analysing PSOE men and PSOE women (24.15 vs. 13.71). The opposite is the case when studying PP men and PP women: PP women maintained more eye-contact than PP men (15.05 vs.

12.85). So, although there are differences in the way women and men behave in

12.85

Figure 8. Eye-contact of PP men and women

general, these differences may disappear or even be more marked when the MP’s political allegiance is taken into account.

As shown in Figure 8, there are two important differences that are worth men-tioning: 1) women kept more eye-contact than men (15.05 vs. 12.85) and 2) wom-en used many more glances than mwom-en (12.25 vs. 4.00).

Glances function basically as regulators and may be related to detachment and non-affiliation. So, these results indicate that when communication is between equals (i.e. woman – woman), there is a tendency to foster political and gender distance. In the following extract, we can see a succession of eight glances cast by Sra. Palacios Pérez while asking the RM about the effects of the present crisis on the Romani community in Andalusia:

(14) … Señora Consejera, desde que en 1982 el PSOE ganó por primera vez las elecciones al Parlamento de Andalucía, la verdad es que se ha hecho algo, como usted está diciendo, por paliar las necesidades puntuales de la población gitana, pero muy puntuales, pero se ha trabajado muy poco en actuaciones encaminadas a corregir definitivamente los desarreglos sociales de estos conciudadanos y conciudadanas…

(8-10/POC-000418, Sra. Palacios Pérez, June 2010) [… Regional Minister, since the first PSOE victory in the Andalusian

Parliamentary Elections in 1982, the truth is that work has been done towards alleviating the specific needs of the Romani community, but very specific work, but very little has been done to definitively solve the social problems of these fellow citizens …]

Here Mrs Palacios Pérez blames the RM’s party (i.e. PSOE) for doing nothing to help the Romani community in Andalusia. She uses glances just to regulate her discourse that describes this political party as negligent and incompetent. In this case, Sra. Palacios Pérez’s willingness to increase her political – gender distance with the RM is obvious.

When analysing eye-contacts among PSOE MPs, we found that they were dif-fered considerably (Figure 9).

Men kept much more eye-contact than women (24.15 vs. 13.71) and used more 2/3-second (3.53 vs. 0.97) and 4/5-second (1.62 vs. 0.85) eye-contacts than women. The reason is that they need to compensate for the fact that they are of different genders. PSOE male MPs and the RM share the same political ideology, but they differ in gender. Thus, the distance between PSOE male MPs and the RM is diminished. The following extract comprises a question about the youth card that was raised by Mr Rodríguez Acuña:

(15) … y constantemente se está aumentando el número de empresas que se ofrece para ofrecer las ventajas y los descuentos a los jóvenes. Por todo

ello, al Grupo Socialista le gustaría conocer en el día de hoy hoy la gestión, gestión, las últimas actuaciones que se están llevando a cabo …

(8-09/POC-000774, Sr. Rodríguez Acuña, April 2010) [… and the number of firms prepared to offer advantages and discounts to

young people is constantly increasing. For this reason, the Socialist Group would like to know today, today the management, the management, the latest measures which have been taken …]

As we can see here, he uses two two-second eye-contacts (one at the beginning and another at the end) and one one-second eye-contact (in the middle). Mr Rodríguez Acuña mentions the Government’s effective policies. He uses eye-contact when referring to the increasing number of firms and ‘the management [and] the latest measures’. Thus, he seeks to show support and proximity.

In summary, eye-contact is used as a discursive strategy that fosters 1) gender distance between PP women and the RM and 2) gender proximity between PSOE men and the RM.

The RM keeps more eye-contact with women (25.11 seconds per minute) than with men (20.19 seconds per minute) (Figure 10).

On examining the different types of eye-contact, only eye-contact of less than one second has been found to have more occurrences in the RM’s interaction with men (2.50 occurrences per minute) compared with women (1.89 occurrences per minute).

However, our data also reveal that gender differences do not carry over when MPs’ political allegiance is taken into account (Figures 11 and 12).

In other words, gender differences are still present in the RM’s interaction with MPs from the same political party (6.6 seconds of eye-contact per minute in interaction with PSOE men vs. 18.17 seconds per minute in interaction with PSOE

24.15

Figure 9. Eye-contact of PSOE men and women

women), as shown in Figure 12. By contrast, regarding the RM’s interaction with MPs from the group in the opposition (PP), there were no significant differences

20.19

Figure 10. Regional Minister’s eye-contact with men and women

33.78 32.04

RM with PP Men RM with PP Women

EC secs/min

Figure 11. RM’s eye-contact with PP men and women

6.60

RM with PSOE Men RM with PSOE Women

EC secs/min

Figure 12. RM’s eye-contact with PSOE men and women

found in the amount of eye-contact (33.78 in interaction with PP men vs. 32.04 in interaction with PP women), as shown in Figure 11.

From these data, it can be concluded that political differences are more im-portant than gender differences. When the RM interacts with a PP MP, she tends to follow a common eye-contact strategy, without distinguishing between women and men, basically with the purpose of saving face and trying to reinforce her argument. When interacting with PSOE MPs, the RM does not consider her face at risk and behaves more naturally. One of the reasons for this differing behav-iour with PSOE men and women can be that women tend to be more affiliative (Mehrabian, 1971). Thus, the RM encounters more positive feedback when inter-acting with PSOE women than when interinter-acting with PSOE men. These results are in agreement with those of Bente et al. (1998) and Zanna and Pack (1975) who reveal that ‘… females alter their nonverbal displays “on the demands of the situa-tion”’ (LaFrance, 1981:130).

Similarly, Hidalgo Tenorio (2002) analyses the strategies that politicians use to defeat their political adversaries. To this end, she taped some of the speeches, in-terviews and debates of the 2000 electoral campaign in Andalusia (Spain) and paid special attention to the way they interact with each other. She hypothesised that gender might influence their choice of discourse structures. Interestingly, Hidalgo Tenorio highlights the importance of politicians’ political allegiance and states that this factor can even override gender differences:

… the female candidate very often employs the linguistic features that are general-ly said to characterize male linguistic behaviour; on the other hand, the three male candidates can also use those other features which have tended to be ascribed to females; moreover, Conservatives can try to adopt from the non-Conservatives some linguistic habits unfamiliar to them; and non-Conservatives can also make use of some features which, normally, we would not associate with them. The way in which these politicians select some discourse features instead of others can be explained by a consideration of political and personal factors. It goes without say-ing that their ideological orientations, their educational backgrounds and their political intentions are mapped onto the selection of vocabulary, the pronominals used and certain pragmatic features: in other words, their own linguistic choices.

(Hidalgo Tenorio 2002:258) So, gender differences may increase or decrease depending on the context. Bente et al. (1998:35) explain that ‘when context information is taken into consideration, many gender differences in nonverbal behavior disappear or change.’ Dovidio et al. (1988) examined how both gender and situation-specific differences relate to non-verbal displays of dominance. They obtained different results depending on the women’s and men’s expertise or power. So, on the one hand, when women

and men (in mixed-gender interactions) did not possess differential expertise or power ‘… women looked significantly more while listening than while speaking, whereas men displayed more equivalent levels of looking while speaking and look-ing while listenlook-ing’ (1988:239). On the other hand, when women and men had high levels of power or expertise they displayed equivalent levels of looking while speaking and listening. Thus, when the women’s position of power was well de-fined, they were as likely to display their power non-verbally as men. Dovidio et al. (1988:240) state that:

In general, the visual behaviour results are consistent with previous research of same-sex interaction demonstrating that higher visual dominance ratios are dis-played by people higher in status (Ellyson et al. 1980), military rank (Exline et al.

1975), or the desire to control others. (Ellyson et al. 1980; Exline et al. 1975) This may explain the RM’s behaviour: she is in a position of power and this vari-able has been shown to be more important than the gender varivari-able. Dovidio et al.

(1988:241) coincide with Rosa and Mazur (1979) in that:

The relatively high levels of looking while speaking displayed by high-power persons may allow them to closely monitor the responses of their partners and thus make effective adjustments that will enable them to maintain social control.

Relatively high levels of looking while speaking may also more frequently create periods of mutual gaze. Interactants who maintain their gaze may then elicit sub-missive displays from their partners.

Exline et al. (1965) describe this visual pattern exhibited by high power interac-tants as ‘high visual dominance behaviour’.