How Gender Affects Friendships

The main topic of chapter 8 was how gender affects friendships. A main point of the chapter was how men and women differ in the closeness of their friendships. Women seem to have closer friendships than men due. Which might be due to females being more likely to have a more intimate friendship then men. Maybe due to the reason that men prefer to be less intimate. This closeness in friendship does not only apply to female-female friendships but also male-female friendships. However closeness and intimacy are often times measured by self-disclosure, which women usually rank higher on. Therefore self-disclosure could be that female definition of intimacy, while the male definition is more concerned with participating in shared activities. It …show more content…
Women tend to have more friendships that ended compared to men. Their friendships also tend to last less time than men's friendships. A study focusing on fourth and fifth graders concluded that females were more likely to accommodate and compromise during conflicts in order to maintain the friendship, while males were more likely to assert themselves, walk away or use verbal aggression in conflicts with friends.Even though boys tend to be more direct in their conflict resolution and girls are more likely to focus on retaining the friendship, females have a higher rate of ending friendships. This is an interesting concept since even though females focus on maintaining a friendship even during conflict, they are more likely than men to end their friendships. This is especially interesting since it might indicate that females have more problems in conflict resolution than males, who tend to be more direct. A connection to this concept could be gender difference in aggression (Helgeson 144) that might explain why boys are more likely to use verbal aggression in their conflicts than girls are. Due to boys tending to be more aggressive during all stages of