Simon Kabateck, Ethan Therieau, Naima Bukhari, Jocelyn Ramos
We wanted to look at how films portrayed gendered communication between men and women through the focus on business interactions. We believe that movies and television interpretations of business and how genders are displayed carry some underlying truth despite them being just fiction. For our study, we watched a list of fictional media, specifically television, and movies, that portrayed men and women in different business roles to observe assertive communication styles. We were curious to see if business roles or gender were more impactful in interpreting if one’s communication style would be assertive in business interactions. Our findings were that individual business roles were more significant determinants of one’s assertive patterns in communication than gender variation. The research we did was impactful for understanding how society has portrayed gendered communication across films when analyzing the roles within the business and what that possibly means for society’s interpretations of genders in a specific role in business. Further research we hope is done on real-life business observations versus fictional television so that we may get a better understanding of whether our findings show some accuracy or not when analyzing real-life interactions in business between men and women in different business positions.
Background
In the last movie you saw, can you remember how men and women were shown to interact with each other? Try connecting that thought with other movies you’ve seen in your head before continuing this article. We found interest in analyzing how gendered communication has been interpreted within films, specifically, business interactions between men and women. It is the stereotypical idea that men command business interactions in films much more than women simply because of gender stereotypes. Research by Paula Pomerenke analyzed how business conversations between men and women saw men utilize more assertive behavior than women in communication (Pomerenke,1996). Another article we explored by J.K Harter argued that one’s role in business actually dictates if an individual utilizes assertion in business conversations (Harter 2022). When comparing these two lines of research, we were faced with some gaps when we overlapped the two sets of data. What happens when we are given a woman in a dominant position or a man in a subordinate position? This led us to our main question: is assertiveness in business communication in film patterned more with the role one pertains to in business or their underlying gender?
Methods
For our study, we looked at an array of twelve different movies/television series focusing on men and women working together in business. We selected these movies that focused on the one-on-one business relationships between either a boss being a male or female and a subordinate working with them that was the opposite gender. Some of the films we watched are shown above: this includes Up In the Air, The Proposal, Suits, and The Intern. The films we looked at were from between 2000 to 2023 in release dates. We viewed six movies with men in dominant roles and women in subordinate roles and six films with women in dominant roles and men in subordinate roles. We had each individual in our group watch each movie to observe the assertive behaviors to avoid possible gender bias of, for example, watching our own gender in a way we did not personally agree with. When we refer to business interactions that we observe, we refer to the two individuals communicating about the business they both work for, in terms of discussing problems, goals, motivations, or plans for that business. One of the movies we watched, for example, was The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock as the head of a publishing company and Ryan Reynolds as her assistant. We would monitor each individual if they utilized the assertive behavior we found from the articles whenever we believed they engaged in communications related to the publishing company they both worked for. This process occurred for each movie, where we had everyone in our group watch the same movies so the boys and girls in our group would not create possible gender bias by watching their own gender in specific roles. While observing these films, we would look towards articles we found from our research to see if certain assertive behaviors we found in our studies of communication in business would occur. Two of the four features involved behavior, where individuals that were described to be assertive in communication would express language that contained more profanity words and would emphasize pronunciation in their words to signify meaning (Dasgupta 2012). The other two features involved nonverbal assertive behavior, which was individuals that were assertive in business communication having the tendency to keep their head still during conversation and initiate touch more frequently when conversing with other individuals (Furumo 2007). While observing these behaviors as we watched films, we would look for frequency, the context of use, possible combinations of behaviors, and other possible assertive behaviors utilized frequently across the films we watched. Our hypothesis was that we believed that business roles would be more of an obvious factor for assertive communication to occur versus one’s underlying gender. This would occur based on if the films we saw of both males and females in dominant business roles would utilize assertive behavior more than subordinate positions.
Results
Our findings portrayed that individuals in superior positions in business were more likely to express assertive patterns of communication. We were happy to see that our hypothesis on this study was proven actually right. If you look at Figure 1, you can see that we measured how many movies we saw utilized each of the assertive behavior and placed our observations of women and men in dominant positions (red and blue) and men and women in subordinate positions (orange and green). When looking at the graph, you can see men and women in dominant positions used each of the four behaviors much more in the setting of business communication than those in subordinates. Since we can see men and women both varied for each behavior depending on position, we can see that business roles played a more crucial role in interpreting when assertive behavior was more likely to be seen. Another interesting finding was that men were seen to utilize these assertive behaviors much more than women, whereas, for both dominant and subordinate positions combined, women only expressed more in one assertive trait that we looked for. Men only saw slightly more usage in dominant positions for only two of the assertive behaviors we monitored.
Conclusion
Our findings leave an impact on men and women that both perform in the business world. A highly competitive, creative, and honestly frightening place in today’s society. Men and women are past the sexist standpoint that one gender rules over the other as we see both men and women entrepreneurs, CEOS, lawyers, etc. We believe our findings impact both genders in business in the sense of communication. Anyone can establish good ideas, but delivering them and presenting them in conversation requires a level of assertiveness. The level of assertiveness controls the conversation and allows the other person to be heard. That is what our study hopes to help bring to the table toward aiding society. We do not believe that business titles one carries give one a sense of confidence and entitlement. Our hope is that our findings can carry over to perhaps the unconfident women carrying a high-end role in a business or a male intimidated by his female boss. We hope that our findings help devote confidence toward any individual in business to possibly use assertion towards presenting important information or an idea of theirs. The business world can be an intimidating place for anyone, but there is bravery in taking command in a conversation and taking the leap towards presenting your ideas and being confident within them. That is what we hope our study does the most: establishing confidence within readers to be comfortable with communicating their thoughts toward aiding a business that they work for and are passionate about.
References
Dasgupta, S. A., Suar, D., & Singh, S. (2012). Impact of managerial communication styles on employees’ attitudes and behaviors. Employee Relations, 35(2), 173–199. https://doi.org/10.1108/01425451311287862
Furumo, K., & Michael Pearson, J. (2007). Gender-based communication styles, trust, and satisfaction in virtual teams. Journal of Information, Information Technology, and Organizations (Years 1-3), 2, 047–060. https://doi.org/10.28945/138
Harter, J. K., Schmidt, F. L., & Hayes, T. L. (2022). Business-Unit-level relationship between employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and Business Outcomes: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(2), 268–279. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.2.268
Pomerenke, P., Varner, I. I., & Mallar, S. (1996). The depiction of female and male professionals in business communication. Business Communication Quarterly, 59(4), 36–46. https://doi.org/10.1177/108056999605900404