- Good evening and thank you for joining us tonight for "A Feminist Perspective". This weekly radio broadcast is sponsored by the Women's Resource and Career Planning Center. A program and information service of the Dean of women's office 220 Strong Hall. Located in the Women's Resource and Career Planning Center is a large learning resource service which contains vast amounts of information in the form of News clippings, government documents, magazine articles, research studies, and books pertaining to the many aspects of the women's movement. These materials are as valuable for men as they are for women since sex role definitions and stereotypes affect both sexes. So we invite all our listeners to come up and browse through the resource center. And we invite you of course, to come in and take advantage of the many services offered by the Dean of women's office, 220 Strong Hall Tonight, we have two guests, Vicky Hammer. Who's a graduate student in the department of speech communication, human relations and is a research assistant in the office of affirmative action. And Shirley Feldman, who is a graduate student at KU in psychology, and is working on research on the attitudes of, and about women. Our topic tonight is women against women. I think that topic reflects our bias basically that women tend to be against one another, they talk about each other, they're down on one another. We're going to explore that topic tonight and I'd like to start at the very beginning with something I find interesting. A research study done recently that found that women's attitudes about women begin at the preschool age. They investigated the Saturday afternoon, Saturday morning television commercials and found that little girls were much more favorably disposed to products that were advertised by little boys than they were if little girls had appeared on the commercials. So from the very beginning women don't seem to take one another too seriously. - Yeah, I find that probably is true. I don't know exactly what causes that. I hardly think that it's a natural thing. I, I just imagine that it begins with the socialization process as soon as we were all born but I've seen it manifested at a later age in junior high. I remember a couple of years ago when I was doing my student teaching, I had a ninth grade class and we were doing some experiments with some stories that were written traditionally for girls from the girl's point of view and other stories were written for the boys point of view and it was much easier to get the girls to read the boys stories and vice versa. The men didn't seem to think that the girls stories were really worth reading. I don't know what that says about women's attitudes towards women but that is a reflection that at least in part of the society at that age attitudes about women are beginning to be a little less favorable than attitudes towards men. - Were the plots different? For example, the women having tea parties and the men playing pirates. - Now, if I remember correctly, one of the stories was a kind of a plot summary of a movie that Patty Duke was in at that time. And it dealt a lot with personality and self development. And the other story was about a race driver at the time. - Well, I think it becomes apparent to children at a very early age that the male role is more rewarding in a sense society only that is that men just come out on top and people have done studies in which they found that girls wanting to be tomboys but as engaging in male types of activities is more acceptable than boys engaging in any sort of female, traditionally female type activities. And that's really because male activities are better somehow and I think that you learn them quite easily - I think one thing we better emphasize from the very beginning, we're not defining a one role as female or one role as male. And that's simply the way that culture has directed males and females is not necessarily correct or like that all over the world. - I'm remembering back to my own childhood when I always wanted to do the things that boys did and play with the boys instead of the girls because somehow it seemed like the odds were stacked in their favor. Boys seemed to have more fun, they got dirty or they were loud or they did more adventurous things and that's the kind of things that I wanted to do. It seemed like it would be more fun than sitting under a tree having a tea party. And I think that that accounts for the fact that for a long time, I've usually chosen men for friends instead of women because somehow the things that they did seemed more interesting. - Yeah, I think that's illustrated when we get older and when we become teenagers to start becoming interested in men. I remember when I was in high school I had four or five girlfriends but we always had an agreement that if we had made plans to go out to a movie on Saturday night and a boy called us, that we would immediately break our arrangement with a girlfriend so that we could go out with a boy, you know, it was just understood. - Yeah, I think that illustrates that boys don't have to do that because they have control about who they go out with them and when so they don't have the same kind of conflict. That is a boy who makes arrangements with other boys isn't going to be asked out by a girl, he's going to do the asking so he can avoid those kinds of conflicts. - Well, it was obvious to me even then that the most important relationships were the relationships with the boys. And that the only reason that I went out with girls is because I didn't have a boy to go out with. And now this is where we get to see movies and, you know we're about to get a pizza and they really weren't that my real friends really weren't that important. - I think that is something that I think has been discussed on this program before that especially in the high school situation, a woman's status very much depends upon the man status that she is dating at the time. You are a very important woman if you're going out with the football hero or with the basketball hero. And so I think I agree that you define your status by the man and it doesn't really make any difference who your best girlfriend is because girlfriends at least when I was going to high school you could have the most popular girl in high school having a girlfriend who wasn't in that circle, but the girlfriend was a private girlfriend. Your relationship with the same sex it was always when you were at home and you might tell secrets to that person but it wasn't nearly as public as all the relationships with men that helped define how popular you were or how big a person you were in high school. - Yeah, but on the other side, it must be said that men raised the status by the kinds of women that they go out with or lower their status by the kind of women they gone out with too. I mean, a boy who is very high status can raise a status even more by going out with an attractive female. - I think that that fits in with the whole picture of women against women though because that puts us in a very competitive situation. You want to look good so that you can get the man that will help define your status. And that looking good isn't enough you've got to look better or be better than the other woman so that he'll pick you instead of her. I have an example of that, I'm doing my thesis research and advertising and I was reading advertising texts the other day. And there was a list of characteristics and facts folder and code that advertising had learned about women and men. And one of the facts that they'd picked up about women was that a woman will look at a picture of a new woman longer than a man will. And their explanation for it was that she was looking for points of comparison. So it seems like from the very beginning were put into a rivalry, competitive relationship with women. - I think I can agree with that and women become important as points of comparison or as rivals rather than important for specific qualities that they might have. I think that this continues later on in life, I was reading about a professional golfer, a woman on the PGA Turner Tour, Marlene Hagge, and there's picture of Marlene in white knee high boots and tight white pants and all of this is also described it takes up about a third in the article. But she was saying that women golfers can't expect to draw the kind of crown sort of a man golfer can she says, it's natural that if you want to see someone hit a golf ball you go see Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer put it out there 300 yards. Now, if you want to see a stripper, chances are you'd rather see a woman than a man. And she divides things into that way. Basically the men are the athletes and the women on the professional golf tour are there for entertainment and they should expect to draw lower crowds play for lower purses. And I'm wondering if you have anything in your experience where-- - I'm suspecting that there are quite a few women golfers who wouldn't agree with her. Nevertheless, she is the one that got a three column article in the New York Times. - But do either of you have anything in your experience where a woman perhaps who has already made it in a profession in some male dominated field then might turn around and put down other women. - I can think of something that you just triggered off earlier about an article I read in the Kansas City Daily in which women, advertisers who were the head of big companies like cosmetics companies and things were coming under a lot of pressure by organizations because they were misrepresenting women or representing them in traditionally unfavorable ways I suspect. And these were women who had like made it in male dominated fields and yet we're continuing the stereotype of women as you know, kind of scatterbrain women and housewife types who had to look young to be beautiful, for example. And they were kind of resisting this and kind of resenting it in addition to that. That is after they had made it to the top in a male dominated field they were angry about being accused of putting down women which in fact they really aren't doing and that's kind of how they made it. - I don't have any kind of, you know I just have speculations about why that might be but I think most women who have made it to the top in a traditionally male field have really had to struggle and fight and in more ways than one more than just the professional sense of it. But I'm sure that in a lot of ways they've been dealing with the so-called masculine woman image and I can see their being reactionary to that kind of thing and trying to preserve in themselves the traditional image of the feminine woman. I mean, I think that makes perfect sense to me that that would happen. - Yeah, it's not like unlike Blacks who has made it to the top who will say that if you try hard enough you can do anything you want you just have to be motivated and try hard. Those are often called uncle Tom, but the same kind of thing goes on. There has to be some sort of justification for all the work that you've gone through. - An article in the "Wall Street Journal" like a couple of months ago pressed this point a little bit further. It was written by a woman, by Grace Hechinger and it talked about professional women at a business level, at a faculty level who knife upcoming women in the back professionally speaking, not recommending them for advancement, making them prove themselves even more than the male candidate and the way she suggested it might be accounted for is that in, she says in many professional fields women have long been so totally dependent on men and so conditioned to the acceptance of male written rules that the few women who had gone to the top are still trying to prove their legitimacy by adopting those same rules with a vengeance. To appear to favor a female applicant this becomes a sign of weakness suggesting that if you've made it you pretty much had to struggle to get there and you don't want to appear weak. - There are probably a lot of other things going on I suspect too, I mean, in some ways being a token woman on the faculty, for example, is a very nice position. And the more women you get on the faculty then the less your power as a woman in the token woman. And so I suspect there's some self interest involved with a lot of women and in addition to that, there's this thing about if you have to struggle then you want other people to have to struggle. - I think that makes a lot of sense. I think that underlying instigation here we've started to put a little bit of blame on women for blaming others. Let's look at some of the societal attitudes that might underlie this. Shirley, I think you've worked on some research relating to this. - Okay, well, I'll just mention a couple of things that have gone on in the literature in the psychological literature that I'm familiar with in which people have demonstrated that both men and women devalue women and will attribute less valued personality characteristics to them. For example, in the McKeon Sheriffs Studies that were done in the 1950s, they found that asking men and women to assign adjectives to men or to women most of the favorable attitudes were assigned to men. They were described as easy going, and informal, and humorous, and witty, and industrious et cetera. And most of the unfavorable adjectives were assigned to women and they were things like snobbish, submissive, vain, touchy, moralistic, fearful et cetera. - Can I inject a note in there about that article? I'm familiar with that too, and I've used it two semesters in a lecture that I give on semantics and women and the meanings of words. And I've picked a lot of those words that Sheriff and McKeon found were traditionally you know, applied to men traditionally applied to women and I've conducted very informal kind of study, actually not a study, just I presented the words to the people in the classes and asked them to categorize them. And I don't know this is probably just indicative of young college people but a lot of the people in those classes refuse to categorize them that way any longer they said that they didn't see them that way anymore traditionally either male or female and I've also run across the same kind of thing in some research that I've done. In the seventies and late sixties, young people's attitudes about each other, men and women are becoming more alike, they're not so much divided on sex terms anymore which I think is really as a positive kind of change, if it's really happening. - I think people are struggling with this now. It's not clear to me at this point though how much of these feelings or this resistance to categorize according to sex really affects behavior in a different way and or even attitudes, you know it's become socially approved not to assign sex stereotypes in the college community, even though a lot of people I wouldn't find a college population attributing laziness and stupidity to Blacks because that's not socially acceptable anymore. You know, that's a bad thing to do just like it's not socially acceptable to attribute things like emotional to women anymore. And you know, maybe that's a sign of real progress and, you know, I consider that a good thing. I just don't know how really strong like this has felt because in research system recently like in the 1970s in which attitudes are covertly regarding to instead of over regarding to the same results appear that is in a study that Pheterson, and Kissler, and Goldberg did in which they had subjects evaluate paintings by either men and women. They devaluate the women's work when it's just a contest entry and they don't know that this is a successful person. It's only when the painting is a winner, the contest winner that there's no differences in evaluations but I'm sure if he would have asked those subjects, you know, are women less good painters? They would've said no and so it's really unclear how much - Chances are just the first step in a long process and chances are too, it may just remain on the surface. And some other kind of deeper things will have to change before behavioral changes. - I think the stereotypes are really has gotten much more subtle as the years have progressed, I mean, it's much harder to find a sexist advertisement at least overtly although underlying this there is a lot of it or do you think that they're overtly sexist? - Well, I'm doing my thesis on advertising and images on advertising and yes I think they're getting worse, overtly sexist, but that's you know, that's why I'm like-- - With a sense of humor about or like? - Me? - With a sense of humor, I mean, I guess since obviously sexist commercials that seem to be like tongue in cheek or something like that. - Well, I don't know about television, magazine advertisers don't seem to be tongue in cheek. They seem to be, you know, just overtly sexist and I'm getting all this kinds of feedback about how those are the most successful. - It's interesting, I think too, that at least on television, there are a lot of male sexist kinds of advertisement in which the male is portrayed in a certain way. And I wonder if men must not get irritated or tired of being compared to this sexy good-looking hunk. That there are there as many also types like that for women. - Yeah, that's, you know, that's probably true. I haven't paid that much attention although that the ads that I really liked are the beer commercials, you know, the sailing and, you know doing all these fantastically adventurous things in Australia and the orient and ads like that are just not directed towards women. If you live with gusto you are a male you only go around once in life. - And we're all in this together and it's two men and a horse and there is no woman involved at all. - Well, we had a diverge there. Getting back to the study that you were talking about. One thing that I found very interesting it seems like it's a terrible vicious circle. You can't, people do not judge a woman or her creative works as worth anything unless someone has already judged her on her creative works as worth something. It's like the old thing about you have to get experienced to get a job but how do you get a job without having experience? It sounds like according to this, women are trapped and that by themselves as well as by men. - Which is hard to return to, I think that sums it up. - I can't remember, was there any difference between women viewing each other and men viewing women? - The study was conducted with just women so, yeah, we don't have any evidence about that. I don't know, I think that people are in a very difficult spot now. I mean, women are in some ways dependent on people who are already establishing the norms and who's good and who's the best and those people are typically males and so it's hard to get. - Yeah, I don't know why, I didn't know, you know, talking about a solution to that kind of thing. I think the best thing is to do what we're doing right now. Just talk about it and get people thinking about it and hopefully they'll start recognizing those things in their daily interactions with people. - And also doing stronger thing, which is things like the affirmative action committee has done which is making people change their behavior, hoping that some of the attitudes involved. - Definitely, I think that's one of the most positive things as far as changing it's just you would start changing people's behavior like the bends there've been pointed out seems to be indicative that the after person has been forced to change his behavior, his or her behavior, their attitude start to change to coincide with their behavior. - I hope that we've been giving our listeners something to think about. And you can think about it for the next couple of minutes and then give us a call asking your questions and your comments. Our telephone number is 8644530. We'll be taking a short station break and then we'll be back with "A Feminist Perspective". - Okay. - You'll have to ask. - Look like it's going pretty well. - Yeah. - It's remarkable how much Sally resembles. Have you noticed Sally? - Please be careful about eating at the table because the microphone picks it up very well. - Okay, I wonder how much we've been doing that? When I started this I thought I wasn't going to be able to find anything but. - How appropriate to have this ad now. What were you doing in there? - Just listening to the station break so we know when to go back and that was pretty quick. I can go on for another hour. Thank you for rejoining us. Our guests tonight are Vicki Hammer and Shirley Feldman. Our topic is "Women Against Women". And I'd like to turn the conversation a little bit to one specific group of women talking about one other specific group of women. The feminist movement has come in for a lot of criticism from women. Let me read some of the more interesting quotes of women against women and hear your reactions. Two women wrote a book called "Pearl Baby Pearl" started one article in the book with this paragraph. No human relationship gives a woman more happiness, pleasure, fulfillment, or purpose than marriage. Naturally, it is under full attack by the feminists the same people who would take our babies away from us and put them in state nurseries so that we could march off to work in the mines. These women would take the love out of sex, the maternalism out of motherhood and the romance out of marriage. Many of them would do away with marriage altogether. And Mitch Decter quoted in the "Los Angeles Times" talks about the feminist movements and says that women's lips seems to be an easy way for women to cop out on all the major issues of their lives and a vice-president of the national bank of Fort Benning, Georgia who is a woman and has been a banker for 25 years says, those who are fooling around with liberation and that sort of thing are mostly those who can't hold down a job anyway. Now here we have one specific group of women against another group. - Really important for discussion which is really that - Women often attack women rather than seeing the status quo or thinks the way they are as being somehow detrimental to their lives no matter what kind of lives they want to live they lash out at other women. - I don't know in this particular instance if this is any more indicative of women attacking women than just people attacking people when they disagree with each other. I hadn't thought about it that much, I'd like to respond anywhere into that first quote. I think that that first quote is indicative of the kind of overreaction that not just the female opposition but the male opposition has to feminism, I don't want to be on a defensive but when the two women who wrote the book talking about state nurseries and marching women off to the mines, that's ridiculous. I suppose, you know, and in countries as big as ours and as many people as there are with as many divergent views about what's right and the right way to live a live there are women who want children in State nurseries and want everybody working in the mines. But I am Dr. Danny, I talk to women who say I want a chance to develop my mind, use my talents. I found that my child is not in any way worse off for spending six or eight hours a day in a nursery. I find that we get along a lot better than when I was with the child 24 hours a day. You don't think this has anything to do with womanhood per se, women against women, you said it was people against people. And yet I hear you responding out of your own being as a woman, to these women. It seems to me that the issues involved and also some of the emotions are tied into being a woman. what we're dealing with here is the sex role which is being a woman. I think these issues are women's issues that at least childcare has been traditionally defined a woman's job but I've heard respond in similar ways, I suppose. I don't know, you know, I don't know what the statistics are about whether more women than men respond adversely to feminism but I can understand why women respond the way they do I think. When you've been defined traditionally in terms of one or two roles, mother and housewife and you hear someone saying that these aren't enough a person who has lived their entire life that way I can see all kinds of variables as they are acting there. - I'm sure that they find it very threatening. - They find it very threatening I'm sure and I can understand how they would interpret the situation of trying to take my whole definition away from me. I know women who want children and a career and when every man can have that it seems ridiculous to me that a woman can't have that too. And I definitely think that man should have the opportunity to raise children. I mean, I'm saying that I've never had the experience but I'm sure it's a very rewarding experience. Why should they be denied then? Yeah, I think that part of the reactions of these women is a part at least a resource of the way the women's movement started out and the kind of approach it took. I think that it has been at least until very very recently geared to a certain kind of woman that is the intellectual, middle class, upper middle class woman who has achievement, motivation in the sense of career, et cetera, et cetera. And because of that I think this women who don't have careers see themselves as being left out. And I think that they have been to a certain extent. I don't think that the women's movement has tried to get to the lower class woman at least until recently. You know it's like any other movement it starts out with the elite and then kind of seeps down gradually. - It starts out with the people who have time to think about this thing. - And so I can understand having them feel this way - And it's also unique in that I see it as starting internally because for a woman to make her first public protest whether it's to her husband or her family or her parents just to say, no, I don't want to do that. She has already gone through the revolution inside herself because she has put aside her own opinions, society's opinions that this is your role and she has taken the very non-traditional, non-feminine aggressive action. And for a woman is quite unusual. And so it seems to me whenever a woman gets involved to the least extent in the feminist movement transformation is already taking place inside her. I think I agree with you about when the feminist movement first began reviving again in the mid sixties. There wasn't a place for the housewife it put down the role of housewife alone or the intellectual woman but the woman who was a housewife and who didn't have a college education didn't have any place to go, didn't have any place to turn. She just was bombarded with all of these messages about how her work wasn't fulfilling. And I'm sure she interpreted as being well, these people don't think that what I'm doing is worthwhile, that I'm useless. And now, let's see what was I going to say? - I just think it's important that we think of those people as people to point out that is, you know I think it's important to gear the movement to the needs of those particular women. - Well, I don't know about winning them over. This is what I was going to say. I think that at least for me, I went through a period and then I realized, Oh, wait a minute, this is a valid choice. If a woman wants to choose to be a housewife and mother that's absolutely fine. - Will you listen to me? I'm not saying we should win them over and tell them to go out and get work, not at all. I'm saying that, that they should be our allies. And then they should see the movement as providing freedoms as much freedom for women as there is for men. And that women have as much opportunity to pick out the true kind of life they want to live. And certainly being a mother and a housewife is certainly an acceptable kind of thing if the woman chooses that freely and if she can derive satisfaction from that. However, you know a lot of them aren't happy and it's not because they don't have a job but because, well they're not really looked up to in any way by their husbands, for example-- - This is one of the things that I see the feminist movement having to do now, starting to change the image of a housewife and mother and really attaching a new kind of importance to it. It really, you know, the unpaid domestic, I think in a lot of ways on one level, a woman's on a pedestal in that role but on a social economical level she doesn't really get that much reward from the people around her that she's supposed to be getting. And we have to start changing the image of the housewife mother role. - Perhaps. - More positive like. - Perhaps among housewives themselves so no one says again I'm just a house wife. - It reminds me of something Graca Mark's once said, he said, I would never even consider joining a club that would admit a person like me as a member. I think you get the idea, I was going to bring this up about fields that traditionally have been dominated by women such as elementary school teaching. secretary, airline stewardess, librarians that I think at least in the recent past of the feminist movement has been attacked and the women in those positions. - I think there's been really a lot of pressure on whether or not to choose those roles to choose something that's traditional male, I agree with you I think that's one of the problems with the movement. - Yeah, I don't think the movement would I'm not really familiar with this, but I can imagine that the movement wouldn't have attacked secretarial kinds of work unless secretaries work didn't get paid very much and didn't have very many benefits, they couldn't make very many decisions, et cetera, et cetera. It's not that it's predominantly by women that brings it up under attack by the movement I suspect but rather that in our society it's just a lower level kind of occupation in terms of the kinds of rewards you can derive from it. It's interesting, it reminded me of something a little study that we did last year in which we asked our students to rate how successful a woman would be in an occupation and how successful a man would be in an occupation. And of course this wasn't, it had women, men there were a lot of variables manipulated so that it wasn't obvious to the subjects what we were doing and even with traditionally female occupations And even with traditionally female occupations our subjects said that men would be more successful than women and we couldn't find any occupations that people And we couldn't find any occupations that people even the traditional female ones. And I think that that indicates that to some extent that success is a male word in our society. The best cooks are men, the best dress designers are men and presumably if men went into nursing they'd be the best nurses. So that's why I said I'm not sure when you said earlier that things were changing that's why I said well, I'm not sure that things are changing that much. - One thing that I see as an encouraging sign is again starting at the lower interpersonal level. I just picked up on newsstand the July issue " Red Book Magazine" a woman's magazine not necessarily of the genre of that the AMS is and one of the headline already goes, and one of the headline already goes And the general message of the article is that deep, intimate friendships are very, very important among women and they have a special characteristic. And they have a special characteristic. a woman and a man and that more and more women a word and a name and it more and more women of a sharing relationship and as a result of the women's movement it is becoming more and more acceptable for women to go places together and have this kind of a relationship. I found it very encouraging I guess starting at a small level and maybe if they can be successful in relationships like this then we can attribute more successful traits to women. Let me invite our listeners. And that we invite our listeners. our number is 8644530. I'd like to add that getting back to the rivalry that we experienced in high school since I've been in college and especially in graduate school since I been in college and especially in graduate school as a matter of fact, in graduate school, the relationships that I see anyway happening in my own life are much more equal to women between the men and the women. We don't seem to be defined so much by traditional sex roles as when we were younger. - How has that affected your relationship with women? - Well, I really can't say I'm close to two or three women but I am not any closer my mother, it's not true. I think I'm probably I'm closer to the women than the men. One of the things that the article in "Red Book" pointed out was that there seems to be a time in red book pointed out was that there seems to be a time Basically I think it's when there is no more need for competition then women find they can settle down into a good intimate friendship with another woman. down into a great intimate friendship with another way. The examples they used in the magazine after a woman was married and had a home and had children and the children had started All right, she already had a man, she had a family at that point, the children left and then she had time for someone else in her life that would in no way compete at all. And then with pressure or competition could develop a close friendship. could develop a close friendship. graduate school is kind of the breathing time. Okay, you've already made it in all the scholarships have been allocated. All the scholarships have been allocated. You just do your work and you don't have to worry And at that point, men and women again are competition And at that point, men and women again are competition, but - But at that time women are competing as much with men as with other women. - Well, I wonder if maybe women competing against women Well, I wonder if meaning women and kidding against women at least in graduate school and et cetera of professional kinds of goals but around the personal things. or concessional kinds of goals, but I'm personal friends. For example, you mentioned something against other women cause they've got their man. against other women cause they've got their minutes. but I can sure think of anecdotal evidence in which that isn't true. of anecdotal evidence in which that isn't true. in how good their house is and how good a cook they are and what kind of entertainment they can offer. And also against other women that is women who don't have that secure relationship with their husbands or even have a security better insecure themselves often feel threatened by other women particularly if they are single. That is, you know, so it goes into a different realm perhaps. - I think that perhaps competition just doesn't disappear but just takes on new form depending on the stuff that you are in at the time. - I'm reading one of the conclusions from the article saying that the women's movement has placed a greater value on relationships among women, made women think in terms of friendship as a good in itself not as a poor substitute for male companionship. And here we get back into the Saturday night syndromes at high school where sure we'll go to the movie unless Johny asks you. And they're suggesting that now we can see a value in itself to having a woman as friend by upgrading the pleasure of a woman to take in another woman's company the woman's movement has been able to diminish the anxiety women often feel when they are not sought by men. So they're suggesting that by changing the attitudes women hold towards one another we are also changing our attitudes towards men. And I find that, I think I believe that. - It makes sense. - I just thought of something. When we were talking earlier before the program started you mentioned attitudes about women preferring in a professional context preferring men to women. Well, something that I have discovered in contact with doctors and dentists, that women are often a lot gentler than men. So I tend to prefer a women in those kinds of professional contexts. They're aware of you as a woman and you know know where it hurts and where does it hurt. They're really a lot gentler than men. I'm thinking back over my professional contacts at this point my dentist is a man, my doctor is a woman. - Well, my doctor is a man and my dentist is a man but other contacts that I've had with his nurse and the contacts with the oral hygienists at the dentist. I just went to the dentist this morning to get my teeth cleaned. So I'm thinking about how gentle she was and I have remembered contacts with dentists you know, the big hands just aren't gentle. - The person I rely on for information about finances and about investments is a woman because I feel that she understands my situation making my way from raising myself financially much more than a man would. I know for sure that if I'm going to pick, if I were in need of a psychologist or a lawyer I would pick a woman. - My attitudes are starting to get in the way as soon as you said lawyer, because I'm thinking that I read it's so much harder for a woman because of attitudes toward women. Juries look down on women lawyers and so if I really wanted to win the case philosophically I might want a woman but pragmatically worrying about what the jury might think I probably would pick a man. - I was not aware of that, I have just read cases where women have won fantastic court cases and you know, I don't know what they are. - I don't know, I can't think of anything where I would pick someone just on the basis of that person's sex. I guess if I was having legal trouble I would want to go the best lawyer. - How do we determine who the best is, that is a vicious circle. - I don't know, that's a really hard thing to do except maybe in the area of psychology where if I was going into something like therapy I'd want a woman because I think that she has an additional advantage over a man. at least if it is a woman client but after that it's hard. - Well, let's get back to something a little bit more personal and that is just friendships. Do you now I'm asking for suppositions since we don't have a male panelist. Do you think that friendships among men are different than friendships among women? We've spoken quite a bit about competition being a factor in woman's friendships what about two men who are best friends? Do you think that relationship is in any way different than two very close women friends? - I just really want to speculate about that at all - I don't know, but I think that at least in the two thinking about the problems we raised concerning women's relationships with each other also confirming that maybe not the same extent and maybe not in exact same ways but I'm sure men feel competitive towards each other professionally, you know, personally and for the intentions of other women, just like women do. But I don't know exactly how this is manifested. - Well, just looking at the way men relate to each other from the very beginning. Okay, when you're in high school, if the guys get together they go out and shoot baskets or they go bowling or they play poker they in some way you do things. And remembering that when I was with a group of women we would generally sit around and talk. We talk about ourselves, talk about other women talk about things that were going on that we would talk and men do things together. - I'm not sure how that would affect the friendship but I think that's significant. - I don't know, I think that my stereotypes of men are that they're less inclined to share intimate kinds of things with their friends unless it's some sort of real big problem. I don't know if that's because society sees that sharing that intimate as being kind of a negative thing. - It's a feminine thing. - Probably both that that somehow indicates personal weakness that is having to talk about these things and instead-- - I think that's really true. - I think that that can also build in another one of we circles because women in the past have had friendships of that nature. That's what women did was share some personal things that perhaps it becomes even more of a need later on in life to have a friendship like that like Megan seems to be talking about when other things of temporary interests to have left then you still have this personal need that perhaps a man because he was not socialized in the same way might not have and yet interfering with that circle, if it's valuable someone else has to say it's valuable before they say it's valuable someone else has to say. - It seems like we've gone in a lot of circles this evening but I think we've covered some interesting territory in the process. I'd like to invite all of our listeners to tune in again next week for "A Feminine Perspective". - Oh, I just wanted to compliment you on your client contact, with the eye contact on microphone. - Did you, what were you gonna wear? - Oh no, those last 10 minutes, it was keeping you two. - You were great. - You too, yeah we did great. - Well, we were filling up.