https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7209353.stm
Why companies need female managers

When Helen Fisher speaks, the politically correct members of her audience are likely to flinch.

Declaring that she's "definitely not a feminist," the American anthropologist from Rutgers University dissects the differences between men and women.

Men are more analytical; women are better long-term planners.

Each gender has a different way of falling in love.

And the invention of the plough did more to set back gender equality than anything else since.

What Ms Fisher says is not psychobabble. She bases her findings on archaeological evidence, MRI brain scans, genetics and large-scale surveys of how men and women behave.

And understanding that male and female brains develop and behave differently is important not just if you are in the dating game.

It also helps us to hire the right people, improve teamwork and can - to quote part of the title of her talk at the World Economic Forum in Davos - grow a company's bottomline.

Once upon a time

Double-income families are not an invention of modern times.
"In prehistoric times, double-income families were the norm, and women provided 60-80% of the evening meal," says Ms Fisher.

But following the invention of the plough and with the resulting need for hard manual labour, the power balance shifted.

Only since World War I are women re-entering the workforce and regaining their status in society.

But there are much more fundamental differences between men and women, says Ms Fisher, that have been shaped over millennia of evolution.

For starters, men and women are thinking differently. Brain scans prove it, as does plenty of other research.

On average, women gather more data, consider the context, are intuitive, have a sympathising mind and think more long-term. Ms Fisher calls it "web thinking".

Men, on the other hand, are more focused, think linear, focus on rules and the short-term - "step thinking".

The culprit

Blame testosterone for the difference. From the moment the embryo's brain develops in the mother's womb, high testosterone levels will make you focus on details in later life.
Now lift your hand and look at your palm. Is the ring finger longer than your index finger? Then you were the recipient of high levels of testosterone.

Chances are that you are an analytical thinker (or very musical), regardless of gender, while a shorter ring finger suggests you have a more sympathising mind. And men tend to grow up on lots of testosterone.

You want proof? Research shows that film scripts written by women are more complex and have more ambiguous endings than those written by men.

Male doctors focus on the illness and its treatment, while female doctors take a more holistic approach.

The long-term thinking of women makes them better investors.

It's even true in the bedroom, says Ms Fisher. Men tend to focus more on what they are doing, while women are easily distracted, she says to slightly embarrassed laughter from her audience.

And when men get older and their testosterone levels sink, their brain starts to work differently - they become more sympathetic to the plight of others.

But why the difference? Well, over the ages men tended to be the hunters and needed to focus.

Women, in contrast, had much more diverse tasks, like bringing up children (which Ms Fisher also believes may be the reason why women are better talkers: language is the key tool to control children).

The business case

So what does all this mean for business leaders?

Combine the long-term thinking of women with the short-term focus of men.

And bear in mind that different thinking also results in very different behaviour.

Men think more in terms of status and rank. Women prefer flat hierarchies.

Men can have tunnel vision, women may fail to get to the point.

Women find it difficult to counter aggression. When men push back, it earns them the respect of other men.

When women apologise, they are not really sorry. For men it's a serious affair, a perceived weakening of their status.

Ms Fisher's list goes on and on, but her message is clear.

Managers, says Ms Fisher, have to realise that men and women act differently, and that they complement each other.

Having only men or women on your team would be like hopping on one foot instead of walking.

As the status of women is on the rise again, says Ms Fisher, we "move forward to a lifestyle we had a million years ago".

zzzzzzz....

[view2athrill]

Originally Posted by pseudo krypto

zzzzzzz....

Hmmmm, let's see here....Pseudo Krypto felt it necessary to comment insultingly to someone else's thoughtful post, yet he/she has "no time to hate" as his/her tagline.....anyone else see the ironic contradiction here?

PS: I concur with Helen Fisher's appraisal of the differences inherent in men and women. I'm a woman who's worked in the sex industry for years and have become very observant and respectful of those differences. Broaden your horizons, Pseudo Krypto. Intelligent and thoughtful members of whichever gender you gravitate to will find it sexy.

now i feel its neccesary to comment on your post too,
since when is zzzzz... an insult?
just because i find something boring and try to inject a lil humor im hateful?
ya know what i really hate?
getting lectured by strippers

is that better?

[petal]

^^^^mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
can i smell weasel ?

THANK YOU thats the coolest thing ive been called in a long time, by the way did you know that Weasels are persistent and fearless hunters? They will boldly confront animals much larger than themselves. They've been known to attack humans who come between them and their food. As a last resort, weasels can emit an odor which is as pungent as that of a striped skunk. A severe winter with insufficient food (and bud) is doubtless our worst enemy.
peace

[petal]

weasels ripped my flesh

weasels, size wise are comparable to rats and i'd deal
with an aggressive weasel in the same way i deal with
aggressive rats and that is to stamp on its back with my heel,snapping/crushing its spine.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... .........
now i'm getting the odour of Burnt Weeny Sandwich.

[devilgoob]

We are always thinking about the differences between sexes, always comparing the two, when we should be focusing on our commonalities we share.

"When women apologize, they are not really sorry." - wtf? I am a man, I know women don't like to apologize either, just like men.

Women think more parallel? Men think think in steps...linearly? Well left-handed men think more parallel than most right-handers. Men also think parallel too, they're forgetting the fact that by thinking more parallel-like, that you have a hard time coming up with correct solutions to problems.

While my arguments can be proven, they also can be disproved. A left-hander doesn't always think more parallel, and men aren't always right, and some women don't mean sorry when they apologize.

If I were to say anything about the sexes and their differences, I would be using the words GENERALLY, USUALLY, MOST OF THE TIME, SOME OF THE TIME, to make sure the reader isn't reading these things as facts they can apply in the real world. Oh, you're a man, you have a harder time empathizing, Oh, you can't multi-task that well, because you're a man, Oh you're a women, you have a hard time making decisions from sorting out your parallel thoughts.

Some women are smarter than I. I am better at understanding other people's emotions than some females. Some women don't think as parallely as I do. Some men are way to empathetic, more so then a lot of females. Most of the time men think more serially than women.

And if you're not getting the point of my post, then here:

I am better at understanding other people's emotions than some females.
Some females are better at understanding other people's emotion than I.


See how I can't really say a fact about what I am compared to a population, but I can say facts comparing myself to another person I know?

Example: I am better at understanding emotion's than Jim, Tom, and Adam. Julie is smarter than I am. Jessica never apologizes in order to preserve her pride.


ps I am a little into psychology and shutting down bullshitters.

[petal]

and there was me thinking it all came down to genitalia.
excuse the latin, but i like to talk dirty sometimes.