Articles (2007-2008):

Role and competition

Competitiveness and dominance are stereotypical male behaviors, while expected behaviors for females include accommodation and passivity. Despite rather general agreement as to those sex-role stereotypes, gender differences in actual, rather than expected, assertive behaviors are less clear.

          Competition is usually defined as the acts of two or more persons who are striving for the same position or object. In the present context, I use this term in the sense of striving for a position of dominance.

          Men are generally more competitive with other man than women are with other women. In cross-gender interaction, a clear pattern does not emerge from the literature.

          To dominate is to rule or control through superior power or influence. Like competitiveness, dominance is considered more appropriate for man than for women.

          Although females compete with males under certain conditions, males do not compete with females. However, males apparently interrupt females freely, thus suggesting that males assume a dominant position. Females tend to "interrupt back," an indication that male dominance is not acceptable. However, females are also more submissive toward husbands than toward other males.

          The prototypical family provides a concrete experiential paradigm for being man or woman, a paradigm that helps organize behavior in other contexts too. Specifically, it is the reproductive and productive functioning of women and men within the prototypical domestic sphere which becomes the concrete anchor for conceptualizing gendered behavior, and accounting for the gendered nature of social action in other spheres. 

          Femininity and masculinity are structured by the functions of the two in the domestic domain — the rest of the gender construction may be thought of as an epiphenomenon of the gendered structure of reproduction.The only way for a couple to survive is to find the way to compete each other, to find the resources inside of that couple to accept and complete each other.

          Life in a couple should not be a permanent competition but a permanent collaboration and sharing of love, trust and support.

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