Saturday, June 30, 2007

Contrasting Styles: A New Battle Of The Sexes

Got both of these from the Des Moines Register. First: Wives use persuasion more, study at ISU shows

At work, women still receive less pay than men, but a new study suggests they are climbing the power ladder at home.

The Iowa State University research shows that compared to husbands, wives make more attempts in conversation to persuade their spouses, who are more likely to agree to their demands.

The study did not follow up with the couples to see whether those conversations led to action.

An ISU research team - led by David Vogel, associate professor of psychology, and Megan Murphy, assistant professor of human development and family studies - interviewed 72 married couples. The participants were either staff, faculty or students at ISU, so the results don't necessarily apply to people across all economic or social backgrounds, Vogel acknowledged.

The examples of wives' influence over husbands played out in videotaped conversations between the couples about issues in their lives.

"Someone would say, 'I think our house is too messy, it's always too messy,' and the partner would say, 'I agree,' " Murphy said.

The study was paid for with a $73,000 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health and $18,000 from ISU.

Previous research has suggested that a society that favors men does so both at work and at home, where the one who earns more money has the clout to make the decisions, and the other takes on the bulk of household chores, Vogel said.

"What we found is women were doing more domineering attempts and that the men were more likely to respond by giving in, then by trying a domineering attempt or one-up in return," Vogel said Friday.

The results could be explained by the fact that women are socialized to put more effort into caring for relationships, Vogel said. Also, some studies have shown that marriages are happier if there's a pattern of women exerting influence, he said.

Interesting. But didn't we sort of know this already? It may place it in a more negative light, but isn't there a traditional view that wives nag and husbands give in? OF course "nag" is such an ugly and un-PC word. Maybe we can simply call it women's "projecting power to patriarchal hegemony." That'll be swell!

The second story I saw puts the whole husband/wife "communication" thing in a different light: Man used shock collar on wife, police say

A rural Cambridge man strapped an electronic dog collar to his common-law wife and shocked her for an hour while their daughter was left alone in a hot car, authorities alleged Friday.

Donald Bruce Allen, 41, is charged with third-degree kidnapping, child endangerment and domestic assault in the June 21 incident, say Polk County sheriff's deputies, who made the arrest.

Teri Mathews, 41, told investigators that Allen shocked her 10 to 20 times in an hour and demanded information, the nature of which was unclear, said Neil Shultz, spokesman for the sheriff's office.

"There's certainly been incidents in the past that domestic violence has been given a lot of different definitions, but I've never seen anything at all where somebody would do this to another person," Shultz said. "I can't imagine what this must have felt like, having that dog collar on and being shocked 10 or 20 times over the period of an hour.

"It's bizarre."

Yikes! Patriarchal hegemony strikes back.

After reading stories like these, I sometimes wonder why women consent to live with us at all.

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