The Gerderlect and Feminism Theories

The genderlect theory by Deborah Tannen attempts to explain how men and women communicate differently. Often this can be the cause of men and women arguing and not understanding each other. The theory states that men want to feel independent and respected, while women feel it’s more important to be friendly and liked by everyone. These two separate motives lead them to communicate differently with a different goal in mind.

The theory is practical and it is important to know. In relationships, you should know how men and women react to a certain subject, so that you can communicate effectively and fairly. A look into the theory of feminism, attempts to show how women communicate. They will be soft-spoken when they want something, make eye-contact when they notice a ‘cute guy,’ or blink a lot when they are in shock.

Understanding the feminism theory is important in order communicating with women. While we can learn how women act through the feminism theory, we can look at how they interact with men using the genderlect theory. The genderlect theory helps explain how differently we communicate, and how this affects our conversation.



This clip from the show “Friends,” is a good example of the differences between men and women. The men are very brief, to-the-point, and relaxed in this clip, while the women are overly excited and ask a ton of questions. This shows how women want to know everything and be very close with the friends, while men are interested, but don’t ask many questions.

Feminist Communication Theory

Lana Rakow and Laura Wackwitz state that “feminist communication theory can be distinguished from other theory by virtue of three criteria;” gender, communication, and social change. The theory drives to explain and understand both communication and gender with their respects to socially constructed assumptions. Unlike other communication theories Rakow and Wackwitz propose that feminist communication is structured by four properties; it is explanatory, political, polyvocal, and transformative. These strengths enable scholars to examine past and present experience from multiple perspectives, and implement female voice and representation to transfer thoughts and inspire action in engendered environments. The scholars define voice as the opportunity to both speak and be heard. Whereas representation explores the political and material consequences of attempting to represent groups, or positions other than one’s own. Rakow and Wackwitz analyze the term further by establishing two ways to use representation; the first is the meaning ascribed to people and things (realism). The second is the whole; one person speaking for an individual or the group (social and political). Rakow and Wackwitz explain that representation is created from the meaning of reality; the identity perceptions, behaviors, and experiences that are interpreted and socially constructed. With regards to women in media, “meanings generated by representations are for end goals of economic productivity or political persuasion, with material and ideological consequences.” It’s the relationship between representation, spectator, and social formation that make meaning, not the actual image. In all mediums, whether visual, narrative, or text; “woman is the bearer, not the maker, of meaning.” Women are commodities; their only real existence in media is the role they play.

The clip above is actually an advertisement for Trojan that was banned from a few major TV networks; but for what reason, it doesn’t say. Do you think it’s because pigs representing men, doesn’t exactly fly? Or, do you think it’s because females are degraded with the flash of a condom, and their weakness for sex is just a tad exaggerated? Maybe it’s something entirely outside of gender; perhaps it was banned for advertising premarital sex? What do you think?