The Hindu Business Line : Why women are a puzzle to men

MEN and women are equal, but different. That is why, communication between the sexes is often at loggerheads, as between incompatible computers. Barbara Annis, "the world's leading gender specialist" believes that the two sexes don't understand each other because "they don't appreciate the different ways men and women relate, communicate, problem-solve and make decisions".

In her book Same Words Different Language, she reveals "the five top challenges" before men and women, and advice to create a productive work environment. A few excerpts:

Baby girls are more sensitive to touch, to light and to sounds. They are more easily comforted by soothing words and singing, and even before they understand language, girls are better than boys at identifying the emotional content of speech. Girls show greater interest early in life in communicating and reaching other people.

They spend twice as long maintaining eye contact with a silent adult, and look longer than boys do at an adult who is talking.

Women and men respond differently to stress. To deal with stress, men either fight or withdraw and go into hiding to focus on the problem.

Women tend to react to stress by sharing their feelings. They turn to their friends. Women are natural collaborators, whereas men naturally compete and want to win.

In fields where technical ability is an asset, many women feel that their peers and their clients constantly doubt their competency. The more traditionally male-dominated the field of work, the more women feel they have to meet higher standards than men do to get the same respect.

When women see a person acting a certain way, they tend to attribute this to his or her character. A man will say, `He's behaving like an idiot.' A woman will say, `He's an idiot.' Women do this because of the way they collect memories.

Women tend to have a hard time delegating. They take on a lot at work. Many women get bogged down by detail work, or by doing research they could hand over to someone else. Men are more comfortable delegating tasks to others. They also have a strong ability to simplify things. They'll slim things down by saying, `Let's just focus on these three things.'

The bottom line is that all people are different, and that's also a good thing. We can no longer afford to blame each other for our differences. We all know too well what a lose-lose world that creates.

A book, as the back cover says, "for everyone who works with the opposite sex!"

A queue of questions

WHEN someone asked Newton how he managed to make all those important discoveries, his famous reply was nocte dieque incubando. What does it mean? `Fasten your seat-belts, it's going to be a bumpy night' — name the film in which that line appears. What is the last sentence in the Bible? These and more are among the thousand and odd questions in Stanley David's 2003 Quiz Book. Try out further:

Which water body has no land boundaries and is demarcated only by the presence of the seaweed that floats on its surface?

Which Indian film used around three-lakh extras, the most used in a film?

If Saurav Ganguly is the Prince of Calcutta, then who is the King of Matara?

Which religion, whose name literally means "The way of the gods", is considered Japan's oldest religion?

In the painting `Mona Lisa' by Leonardo da Vinci, what is unusual about her eyebrows?

Where would you find the world's largest fish market?

Which dinosaur has the longest name?

What is the origin of the word `brandy'?

The discovery of rose-coloured granite under the ocean a few hundred metres off the Mediterranean coast off Egypt led to the excavation of which famous city?

Dig through the book for answers.

Fishy on water

THERE is a bunch of odd characters on a ship that has as its true business money laundering or some such. And Dave Barry tells you the story in Tricky Business. A few snatches:

It looked as though he'd stumbled into another fine investment. From what he could tell from the books, the casino ship was a marvellous business, with customers handing over money — cash money, lots of money — in exchange for, basically, nothing.

The next morning, every Happy Conch restaurant was shut down by county health inspectors. A standard random mass inspection, they had explained, and there were dozens of violations. These were the very same inspectors who, until then, would not have cared if they had seen human thumbs in the fritter batter, as long as they got their little envelopes of cash.

Despite countless hours of practice, dozens of auditions, many artistic disputes, seven demo CDs, and two radical changes in hairstyle, `Arrival' never arrived. It wasn't that they were bad; it was just that, as they reluctantly came to understand, they really weren't anything special. They were competent. The problem was there were competent bands everywhere. Competence wasn't the key to stardom; you needed something else. Whatever it was, `Arrival' didn't have it.

Today I called the number for that guy who says you can get rich in real estate without putting up any of your own money. He has all these people come on and sit with him under the palm trees and give testimonials about how, six months ago, they were living in a refrigerator carton, and now, thanks to this guy's foolproof system, they're making eighty-seven-thousand dollars a month from real estate.

"Is there a doctor here?" Wally shouted. "Is anybody here a doctor?" He looked frantically around the second-deck casino. A few gamblers glanced up from their slot machines or gaming tables; some even took the time to shake their heads at him. The rest continued to concentrate on losing money. If somebody was sick, that wasn't their problem.

An extravaganza you can afford after the May exams.

(Books courtesy: Fountainhead, Chennai. E-mail: fhbooks@satyam.net.in)

Tailpiece

"Who is the third umpire... "

"For the finals?"

"No, for Iraq war."

hindubusinessline@hotmail.com

D. Murali

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