The
Sexual Politics of Interpersonal Behavior
by Nancy Henley and Jo Freeman
This
article was originally written by Nancy Henley, then rewritten and augmented
by Jo Freeman. It has been published in all five editions of Women:
A Feminist Perspective, after updating by Nancy. The version here
is from the fifth edition.
Social
interaction is the battlefield on which the daily war between the sexes
is fought. It is here that women are constantly reminded what their "place"
is and here that they are put back in their place, should they venture
out. Thus, social interaction serves as the locus of the most common means
of social control employed against women. By being continually reminded
of their inferior status in their interactions with others, and continually
compelled to acknowledge that status in their own patterns of behavior,
women may internalize society's definition of them as inferior so thoroughly
that they are often unaware of what their status is. Inferiority becomes
habitual, and the inferior place assumes the familiarity -- and even desirability
-- of home.
Different
sorts of cues in social interaction aid this enforcement of one's social
definition, particularly the verbal message, the nonverbal message transmitted
within a social relationship, and the nonverbal message transmitted by
the environment. Our educational system emphasizes the verbal message
but teaches us next to nothing about how we interpret and react to the
nonverbal one. Just how important nonverbal messages are, however, is
shown by the finding of Argyle et al.1
that nonverbal cues have over four times the impact of verbal ones when
verbal and nonverbal cues are used together. Even more important for women,
Argyle found that female subjects were more responsive to nonverbal cues
(compared with verbal ones) than male subjects. This finding has been
confirmed in the extensive research of Rosenthal and his colleagues.2
In studies of subjects of all ages and from a variety of occupations and
cultures, they found consistently greater sensitivity to nonverbal communication
among females than among males. If women are to understand how the subtle
forces of social control work in their lives, they must learn as much
as possible about how nonverbal cues affect people and particularly how
they perpetuate the power and superior status enjoyed by men.
THE
WORLD OF EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE
Even
if a woman encounters no one else directly in her day, visual status
reminders permeate her environment. As she moves through the day, she
absorbs many variations of the same status theme, whether or not she
is aware of it. Male bosses dictate while female secretaries bend over
their steno pads. Male doctors operate while female nurses assist. At
lunchtime, restaurants are populated with female table servers who wait
on men. Magazine and billboard ads remind the woman that home maintenance
and child care are her foremost responsibilities and that being a sex
object for male voyeurs is her greatest asset. If she is married, her
mail reminds her that she is a mere "Mrs." appended to her
husband's name. When she is introduced to others or fills out a written
form, the first thing she must do is divulge her marital status, acknowledging
the social rule that the most important information anyone can know
about her is her legal relationship to a man. Her spatial subordination
is shown in ways parallel to that of other animal and human subordinates:
Women's "territory" (office space at work, individual rooms,
or space at home) tends to be less extensive and less desirable (e.g.,
not having office windows) than is men's. Women are not as free to move
in others' territory or "open" territory (e.g., city streets)
as are men.
Advertisements
form a large part of our visual world, and the messages of advertisements
are subtle but compelling in suggesting that the way the sexes are shown
in them is the usual and appropriate arrangement. Sociologist Erving
Goffman3 describes six themes involving
gender distinctions in advertising pictures: relative size, especially
height, used to symbolize the greater importance of men than of women;
feminine touch that is delicate, not truly grasping; function
ranking, in which males direct and guide action while females are
directed or watch; the family, in which fathers are linked with
boys (and are distant) and mothers are linked with girls and girlhood;
the ritualization of subordination, in which women, by lower
spatial position, canting postures of the head and body, smiles, and
clowning, display subordinate status to men; and licensed withdrawal,
in which women are shown as relatively less oriented to the situation
(often flooded with emotion or distracted by trivia) and are dependent
on men. Goffman draws a parallel between the ritual of our everyday
interaction and the hyperritualization of advertising: our "natural
expressions" are commercials too, performed to sell a view of the
world and of female-male (as well as other) relationships.
ASYMMETRY IN SOCIAL INTERACTION
Environmental
cues set the stage on which the power relationships of the sexes are
acted out and the assigned status of each sex is reinforced.4
Although studies have been made of the several means by which status
inequalities are communicated in interpersonal behavior, these studies
do not usually deal with power relationships between men and women.
Goffman has pointed to many characteristics associated with status:
Between status equals we may expect to find interaction guided by symmetrical familiarity. Between superordinate and subordinate we may expect to find asymmetrical relations, the superordinate having the right to exercise certain familiarities which the subordinate is not allowed to reciprocate. Thus, in the research hospital, doctors tended to call nurses by their first names, while nurses responded with "polite" or "formal" address. Similarly, in American business organizations the boss may thoughtfully ask the elevator man how his children are, but this entrance into another's life may be blocked to the elevator man, who can appreciate the concern but not return it. Perhaps the clearest form of this is found in the psychiatrist-patient relation, where the psychiatrist has a right to touch on aspects of the patient's life that the patient might not even allow himself to touch upon, while of course this privilege is not reciprocated.
Rules
of demeanor, like rules of deference, can be symmetrical or asymmetrical.
Between social equals, symmetrical rules of demeanor seem often to be
prescribed. Between unequals many variations can be found. For example,
at staff meetings on the psychiatric units of the hospital, medical doctors
had the privilege of swearing, changing the topic of conversation, and
sitting in undignified positions; attendants, on the other hand, had the
right to attend staff meetings and to ask questions during them . . .
but were implicitly expected to conduct themselves with greater circumspection
than was required of doctors.... Similarly, doctors had the right to saunter
into the nurses' station, lounge on the station's dispensing counter,
and engage in joking with the nurses; other ranks participated in this
informal interaction with doctors, but only after doctors had initiated
it.5
A
status variable that illustrates rules of symmetry and asymmetry is the
use of terms of address, widely studied by Brown and others.6
In languages that have both familiar and polite forms of the second person
singular ("you"), asymmetrical use of the two forms invariably
indicates a status difference, and it always follows the same pattern. The
person using the familiar form is always the superior to the person using
the polite form. In English, the only major European language not to have
dual forms of address, status differences are similarly indicated by the
right of first-naming (addressing a person by his or her given name rather
than surname): The status superior can first-name the inferior in situations
in which the inferior must use the superior's title and last name. An inferior
who breaks this rule by inappropriately using a superior's first name is
considered insolent.7According
to Brown, the pattern evident in the use of forms of address applies to
a very wide range of interpersonal behavior and invariably has two other
components: (1) whatever form is used by a superior in situations of status
inequality can be used reciprocally by intimates, and whatever form is used
by an inferior is the socially prescribed usage for nonintimates; (2) initiation
or increase of intimacy is the right of the superior. To use the example
of naming again to illustrate the first component, friends use first names
with each other, whereas strangers use titles and last names (although "instant"
intimacy is considered proper in some cultures, such as our own, among status
equals in informal settings). As an example of the second component, status
superiors, such as professors, specifically tell status inferiors, such
as students, when they may use the first name, and often rebuff the inferiors
if they assume such a right without invitation.The
relevance of these patterns to status differences between the sexes is readily
seen. The social rules say that all moves to greater intimacy are a male
prerogative: It is boys who are supposed to call girls for dates, men who
are supposed to propose marriage to women, and males who are supposed to
initiate sexual activity with females. Females who make "advances"
are considered improper, forward, aggressive, brassy, or otherwise "unladylike."
By initiating intimacy, they have stepped out of their place and usurped
a status prerogative. The value of such a prerogative is that it is a form
of power. In interactions between the sexes, as in other human interactions,
the one who has the right to initiate greater intimacy has more control
over the relationship. Superior status brings with it not only greater prestige
and greater privilege but also greater power.DEMEANOR, POSTURE, AND DRESS
The
advantages of superior status are exemplified in many of the means of communicating
status. Like the doctors in Goffman's research hospital, men are allowed
such privileges as swearing and sitting in undignified positions, but women
are denied them. Although the male privilege of swearing is curtailed in
mixed company, the body movement permitted to women may be circumscribed
even in all-female groups. It is considered ''unladylike" for a woman
to use her body too forcefully, to sprawl, to stand with her legs widely
spread, to sit with her feet up, or to cross the ankle of one leg over the
knee of the other. Many of these positions are ones of strength or dominance.Henley8
has reviewed the research evidence for sex differences in nonverbal behavior,
linking it with evidence for differences due to power, status, or dominance.
She concludes that the symbols and gestures used by males tend to be those
of power and dominance, while the gestures of females tend to be those of
subordination and submission. Wex9 reached
similar conclusions through her examination of the public postures of women
and men photographed in Germany.10
The more "feminine" a woman's clothes, the more circumscribed
the use of her body. Depending on her clothes, she may be expected to sit
with her knees together, not to sit cross- legged, or not even to bend over.
Although these taboos seem to have lessened in recent years, how much so
is unknown, and there are recurring social pressures for a "return
to femininity," while etiquette arbiters assert that women must retain
feminine posture no matter what their clothing.Prior
to the 1920s, women's clothes were designed to be confining and cumbersome.
The dress-reform movement, which disposed of corsets and long skirts, was
considered by many to have more significance for female emancipation than
women's suffrage.11 Today women's clothes
are often designed to be revealing of their bodies, but women are expected
to restrict their body movements to avoid revealing too much. Furthermore,
because women's clothes are contrived to cling and reveal women's physical
features, rather than to be loose as men's are, women must resort to purses
instead of pockets to carry their belongings. These "conveniences"
(purses) have become, in a time of unisex clothing and hairstyles and other
blurred sex distinctions, one of the surest signs of sex, and thus have
developed the character of a stigma, a sign of women's shame --for example,
when they are used by comics to ridicule both women and transvestites.ACCESS TO A PERSON'S SELF AND BODY
Women
in our society are expected to reveal not only more of their bodies than
men but also more of their minds and souls. Whereas men are expected to
be stolid and impassive and not to disclose their feelings beyond certain
limits, women are expected to express their feelings fully. Indeed research
evidences indicates that both sexes do act out these stereotypes: Hall's
review of thirty-eight studies of females and males as nonverbal communicators
showed females to be more expressive than males in almost two-thirds of
the studies surveyed.12 Does this mean
that women are more emotional than men? Differences in emotional expression
do not necessarily mean that the actual emotions are felt differently Just
as different cultures operate under different norms for the appropriateness
of emotional display, so do women and men have different "display rules."
For example, a study attempting to separate felt emotion from display rules
found no sex differences in emotional state experienced by subject
in response to emotional stimuli, but did find women to show more facial
activity than men.13 Female socialization
encourages generally greater expression of emotion than does male socialization
(although expression of anger is more sanctioned for men than for women).Both
socialization and expectations of others (social norms) are probably implicated
in the frequent research finding that females are more self- disclosing
to others than males are.14 Self- disclosure
involves both expression of emotion and revelation of other personal and
intimate information. Not only do we expect women to be more self-disclosing
than men, but we see negative implications when women are not self-disclosing,
or when men are: A psychological study found that men who were very self-
disclosing, and women who were not very self-disclosing, were considered
by others to be more psychologically maladjusted than were nondisclosing
men and disclosing women.15 Such self-
disclosure gives away knowledge about oneself, putting women at an immediate
disadvantage relative to men: knowledge, as is often noted, is power.The
inverse relationship between disclosure and power has been reported in Goffman's
earlier cited observations in a research hospital and in other studies.16
Self-disclosure is a means of enhancing another's power. When one person
has greater access to information about another person, he or she has a
resource the other person does not have. Thus, not only does power give
status, but also status gives power. And those possessing neither must contribute
to the power and status of others continuously.Another
factor adding to women's vulnerability is that they are socialized to care
more than men -- especially about personal relationships. This puts them
at a disadvantage, as Ross articulated in what he called the Law of Personal
Exploitation: "In any sentimental relation the one who cares less can
exploit the one who cares more." The same idea was stated more broadly
by Waller and Hill as the Principle of Least Interest: "That person
is able to dictate the conditions of association whose interest in the continuation
of the affair is least."17 In
other words, women's caring, like their openness, gives them less power
in a relationship.One
way to indicate acceptance of one's place and deference to those of superior
status is to follow the rules of "personal space." Sommer has
observed that dominant animals and human beings have a larger envelope of
inviolability surrounding them -- i.e., they are approached less closely
-- than those of lower status.18 Various
authors have subsequently shown that this rule applies between men and women,
with women both having smaller personal space than men and tending to yield
space to men when the two sexes come into proximity.19
And women's time, like their space, can be invaded readily.20TOUCHING
Touching
is one of the closer invasions of one's personal space, and in our low-contact
culture it implies privileged access to another person. People who accidentally
touch other people generally take great pains to apologize; people forced
into close proximity, for example, in a crowded elevator, often go to extreme
lengths to avoid touching. Even the figurative meanings of the word convey
a notion of access to privileged areas -- e.g., to one's emotions (one is
touched by a sad story), or to one's purse (one is touched for ten dollars).
In addition, the act of touching can be a subtle physical threat.Remembering
the patterns that Brown found in terms of address, it is enlightening to
consider the interactions between pairs of persons of different status,
and to picture who would be more likely to touch the other (put an arm around
the shoulder or a hand on the back, tap the chest, hold the arm, or the
like): teacher and student; master and servant; police officer and accused;
doctor and patient; minister and parishioner; adviser and advisee; supervisor
and worker; business executive and secretary. Again, we see that the form
used by the status superior -- touching -- is the form used between intimates
of equal status. It is considered presumptuous for a person of low status
to initiate touch, like first-naming, with a person of higher status.Some
earlier observational and self-report studies indicated that females were
touched more than males were, both as children (from six months on) and
as adults. but we need more evidence than this to conclude that touching
is associated with status; do other members of high-status groups touch
members of low-status groups more than the reverse? In observations of incidents
of touch in public urban places, higher-status persons did touch lower-status
persons significantly more. In particular, men touched women more, even
when all other variables were held constant.21
Not only behaviors, but also social interpretations of behavior associate
power/dominance with touch; as Hall notes, "People's beliefs, anecdote,
self-report, [and] observational studies of socioeconomic status and age,
and one true experiment favor either the power-privilege idea or the idea
that relative dominance increases as a consequence of touch initiation."22Some
studies have attempted to determine whether the effect of touch on perceptions
of dominance is to increase the perceived dominance of the toucher, decrease
the perceived dominance of the person touched, or both.23
Although the findings have been mixed, the preponderance of evidence seems
to indicate that touching affects the perceived dominance of both the toucher
and the touched. In an observational study in public places, researchers
found that when mixed-sex couples walked together in public, the female
was most often on the side of the male's dominant hand; that is, she was
on his right if he was right-handed and on his left if he was left-handed.
These researchers speculated that such "strong-arming" reflected
male dominance and would allow more convenient male touching of the female.24This
touching asymmetry becomes most ambiguous and problematic in heterosexual
situations when females may protest males' touch as presumptuous, only to
be told they are too "uptight." Female office, restaurant, and
factory workers and students are quite used to being touched by their male
superordinates, but they are expected not to "misinterpret" such
gestures as sexual advances. However, women who touch men may be interpreted
as conveying sexual intent, as they have often found out when their intentions
were quite otherwise. Such different interpretations are consistent with
the status patterns found earlier. If touching indicates either power or
intimacy, and women are deemed by men to be status inferiors, touching by
women will be perceived as a gesture of intimacy, since power is not an
acceptable interpretation.25GAZE AND DOMINANCE
The
most studied nonverbal communication among humans is probably eye contact,
and here too we observe a sex difference. Researchers have found repeatedly
that women look more at another person in a dyad than men do.26
Exline, Gray, and Schuette suggest that "willingness to engage in mutual
visual interaction is more characteristic of those who are oriented towards
inclusive and affectionate interpersonal relations,"27
but Rubin concludes that while "gazing may serve as a vehicle of emotional
expression for women, [it] in addition may allow women to obtain cues from
their male partners concerning the appropriateness of their behavior."28
This interpretation is supported by the data of Efran and Broughton, which
show that male subjects too "maintain more eye contact with individuals
toward whom they have developed higher expectancies for social approval."29Looking,
then, may be indicative of some dependency andsubordination. However, looking can also be an aggressive and dominant gesture, when it becomes a stare. Dovidio and Ellyson write, "In humans as in other primates, the stare widely conveys messages of interpersonal dominance and control. Research conducted over the past 60 years suggests that, in general, staring at another person is a dominance gesture while breaking eye contact or not looking is a sign of submission."30 How can the same gesture -- looking at another -- indicate both dominance and deference? Henley suggests that women may watch men when they are not being looked at, but lower or avert their gaze when a man looks at them, as submissive animals do when a dominant animal looks their way.31
Also,
as Dovidio and Ellyson point out, the meaning of gaze depends on the context,
and on the patterning of looking with other behaviors, most notably with
speaking. A series of experiments by Ellyson, Dovidio, and their colleagues
has developed a measure of "visual dominance": the ratio of [looking
at another while speaking[ to [looking at another while listening]. In peer
interaction, we tend to look while listening more than we look while speaking;
however, visually dominant people, both men and women, have a greater proportion
of look/speak to look/listen than do nondominant people. People with higher
status, expert power, or an orientation to interpersonal control all showed
higher visual dominance ratios than did people without those characteristics.
Gender also affects visual dominance behavior: In an experiment with mixed-sex
pairs, both female and male experts showed greater visual dominance in interaction
with nonexperts; when there was no differential expertise, men still showed
greater visual dominance than did women.32
Like other tiny habits of which we are scarcely aware, women's "modest"
eye lowering can signal submission or subordinate position even when that
message is not intended.VERBAL CUES TO DOMINANCE
Gestures
of dominance and submission can be verbal as well as nonverbal. Subtle verbal
cues -- especially paralinguistic features, such as emphasis, inflection,
pitch, and noncontent sounds -- are often classified with nonverbal ones
in the study of interpersonal interaction, because they have similar regulating
functions aside from the traditional verbal content. Other features of verbal
interaction, such as frequency and length of utterance, turn-taking patterns,
interrupting, and allowing interruption, also help to regulate interaction
and to establish dominance.Sheer
verbalization itself can be a form of dominance, rendering someone quite
literally speechless by preventing that person from "getting a word
in edgewise." Contrary to popular myth, men talk more than women, in
both single-sex and mixed-sex groups. Within a group, a major means of asserting
dominance is to interrupt. Those who want to dominate others interrupt more;
those speaking will not permit themselves to be interrupted by their inferiors,
but they will give way to those they consider their superiors.33
It is not surprising, therefore, that Zimmerman and West found, in a sample
of eleven natural conversations between women and men, that forty-six of
the forty-eight interruptions were by males; other research on interruption
consistently finds men interrupting more than women.34In
verbal communication, we find a pattern of differences between the sexes
similar to that seen in nonverbal communication. It was observed earlier
in this article that men have the privilege of swearing and hence have access
to a vocabulary not customarily available to women. On the surface, this
seems to be an innocuous limitation, but it is significant because of the
psychological function of swearing: Swearing is one of the most harmless
and effective ways of expressing anger. The common alternatives are to express
one's feelings with physical violence or to suppress them and by so doing
turn the anger in on oneself. The former is prohibited to both sexes (to
different degrees), but the latter is decidedly encouraged in women.Swearing
is perhaps the most obvious sex difference in language usage. Of course,
sex differences are also to be found in phonological, semantic, and grammatical
aspects of language as well as in word use.35
Austin, for example, has commented that "in our culture little boys
tend to be nasal . . . and little girls, oral," but that in the "final
stages" of courtship the voices of both men and women are low and nasal.36
The pattern cited by Brown,37 in which
the form appropriately used by status superiors is used between status equals
in intimate situations, is again visible: In the intimate situation, the
female adopts the vocal style of the male. In situations in which intimacy
is not a possible interpretation, it is not power but abnormality that is
the usual interpretation. Female voices are expected to be soft and quiet
-- even when men are using loud voices. Women who do not fit this stereotype
are often called loud -- a word commonly applied derogatorily to other minority
groups or out-groups.38 One of the
most popular derogatory terms for women is shrill, which, after all,
simply means loud (applied to an out-group) and high-pitched (female).GESTURES OF SUBMISSION
Henley
and LaFrance suggest that the nonverbal asymmetry of male and female is
paralleled by the asymmetry of racial/ethnic/cultural dominance.39
In any situation in which one group is seen as inferior to another, they
predict, that group will be more submissive, more readable (nonverbally
expressive), more sensitive (accurate in decoding another's nonverbal expressions),
and more accommodating (adapting to another's nonverbal behaviors). How
true this is for racially and ethnically oppressed groups remains to be
shown; in this review, however, we have seen that these characteristics
are among the nonverbal behaviors of females. Recent research by Snodgrass
supports the contention that decoding sensitivity is associated with dominance
and authority, rather than with gender per se.40Other
verbal characteristics of persons in inferior status positions are the tendencies
to hesitate and apologize, often offered as submissive gestures in the face
of threats or potential threats. If staring directly, pointing, and touching
can be subtle nonverbal threats, the corresponding gestures of submission
seem to be lowering the eyes from another's gaze, falling silent (or not
beginning to speak at all) when interrupted or pointed at, and cuddling
to the touch. Many of these nonverbal gestures of submission are very familiar.
They are the traits our society assigns as desirable characteristics of
females. Girls who have properly learned to be "feminine" have
learned to lower their eyes, to remain silent, to back down, and to cuddle
at the appropriate times. There is even a word for this syndrome that is
applied only to females: coy. SEXUAL INTERACTION
Sexual
interaction is expressed through nonverbal communication: the caress, the
gaze, coming close to each other, the warm smile, smelling the other, provocative
postures and inviting gestures; much sexual contact, unlike other forms
of human interaction, is purely nonverbal. Sexual interaction, like all
interaction, is conditioned by the social context in which it takes place.
One particularly compelling aspect of that social context is that males
have more power, prestige, and status than do females, a fact that cannot
but affect heterosexual interaction. If even casual relationships between
females and males are caught up in the social system in which males wield
power over females, how much more does this power system affect the sexual
relationship, which we consider the ultimate intimacy? In addition, in both
heterosexual and homosexual interactions, relationships are affected by
other power and status dimensions, such as work status, wealth, race, age,
and interpersonal dominance. This power too is often expressed nonverbally.Unfortunately,
little has been written on nonverbal behavior, power, and sexuality examined
simultaneously. However, the research and ideas presented earlier in this
article may be applied to the sexual sphere. First, much can be said about
a sexual relationship after observing the mutuality or nonmutuality of various
gestures. For example, we may already believe that the person who is more
dominant in the relationship is the one who takes a superior position in
intercourse, the one around whose pleasure sexual activity is structured,
and the one upon whose climax it is terminated. Beyond that, when gestures
are not mutual (or not balanced over time), one person may dominate by initiating
touching, hand-holding, and kissing; maintaining gaze; putting an arm around
the other's back when sitting; initiating moves to greater intimacy in the
course of a relationship or a single encounter; exerting more influence
over the couple's spacing, postures, and walking pace; getting to hold hands
with the preferred or dominant hand; having the hand in front when walking
holding hands; and terminating as well as initiating hand-holding and kissing.
Subordination may be expressed by the person who shows more emotional expressivity,
shows more facial and kinesic activity, is more self-disclosing, accommodates
timing and action to the other, and exhibits the reciprocal behaviors of
those described as dominant.These
questions of who touches, who initiates, and who terminates apply, of course,
to both heterosexual and homosexual relationships. However, in the heterosexual
relationship, we often have a good idea of what the answers will be; in
fact, heterosexual custom has prescribed male leadership and dominance.
But these are changing times, and many think that few aspects of our society
are changing faster than are sexual relationships and female-male interactions.
Many people today do not wish to have unequal sexual relationships or to
express sexual inequality unconsciously. However, since we generally take
body language for granted and do not attend to it much, it may be hard to
change: nonverbal expressions may lag behind changes in attitudes, values,
and ideas. Slowness in changing this communication may keep us trapped in
old modes of expression and old modes of relationship. No matter how egalitarian
we may believe our relationships or sexual interactions to be, they will
have an edge of inequality and imbalance until we bring our nonverbal expressions
into line with our verbal ones.DIFFERING INTERPRETATIONS OF THE SAME BEHAVIOR
Status
differences between the sexes mean that many of the same traits and actions
are interpreted differently when displayed by each sex. A man's behavior
toward a woman might be interpreted as an expression of either power or
intimacy, depending on the situation. When the same behavior is engaged
in by a woman and directed toward a man, it is more likely to be interpreted
as a gesture of intimacy -- and intimacy between the sexes is typically
seen as sexual in nature. Recent research confirms that, when women display
dominance gestures to men, they are rated higher on sexuality and lower
in dominance than men are rated when making the same gestures to women.41
Because our society's values say that women should not have power over men,
women's nonverbal communication is rarely interpreted as an expression of
power. If the situation precludes a sexual interpretation, women's assumption
of the male prerogative may be dismissed as deviant (castrating, domineering,
unfeminine, or the like). Women in supervisory positions thus often have
a difficult time asserting their power nonverbally -- gestures that are
socially recognized as expressions of power when used by male supervisors
may be denied or misinterpreted when used by women.CHANGE
Knowledge
of the significance of nonverbal communication can help us to understand
not only others' gestures but also our own, giving us a basis for social
and personal change. However, just because certain gestures associated with
males are responded to as powerful, women need not automatically adopt them.
Rather than accepting "masculine" values without question, individual
women will want to consider what they wish to express and how, and they
will determine whether to adopt particular gestures or to insist that their
own be responded to appropriately. There has been growing pressure on women
to alter their verbal and nonverbal behavior42
to the words and movements of "power" -- i.e., to those associated
with men -- often with little thought of the implications. It would be mistaken
to assume that such gestures are automatically better and that it is only
women who should change. Revealing emotions rather than remaining wooden-faced
and unexpressive, for example, may be seen as weak when only one person
in an interaction is doing it; but, in the long run, openness and expressivity
-- by all people -- may be better for the individual, the interpersonal
relationship, and the society. Women who wish to change their nonverbal
behavior can monitor it in various situations to determine when it contradicts
their intention or is otherwise a disservice, and only then change. They
will wish to keep those behaviors that give them strength, whether those
behaviors are traditionally associated with women or with men.(c) 1995 by Nancy Henley and Jo Freeman
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