[jamesbritt]

I think that in contemporary society, men and women are different---not due to simple biology but due to upbringing---and while this difference isn't what's reflected in so-called 'common sense' psychology, it is a valid difference worth exploring through science.

This raises a problem. Should employers speak to both men and women the same way, or should they take sex into account when speaking to people and phrase things differently?

[true_religion]

I can't say definitively, but here's my two cents about the practice of social interaction....

Changing the way you speak to someone based on a single coarse criteria is a poor way to go about social interaction.

You have an entire person in front of you and can guage how to say something based on your past knowledge of their personality, context, the way they're dressed, their current body language, anything else you've gleaned about them.

If all you know about them is that they are male or female, then you'd best just adopt a neutral posture until more information streams in.

Right now the only thing you can guess at with any real degree of accuracy knowing someones gender is which gender they prefer romantically.

[roguecoder]

And how far their genital nerve-cluster protrudes! ;-) (Though that's still overlapping bell curves, of course, and totally irrelevant to any work conversation that does not involve participating in pornography...)

[jtheory]

Well. They should adjust per employee, based on their history of interaction with the employee.

In-group variation (when everyone is split up into only two groups...) is pretty enormous.

I've never liked the "Men are from Mars" approach, though it could be a stepping-stone to "many people think quite differently from me". That's a rough way to go, though (thinking a lesson learned about interacting smoothly with a "woman" or, say, a "hispanic person" will apply to everyone else in that group).