Importance Of Gender Barriers In Cross Cultural Communication

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Gender As A Barrier In Cross-Cultural Communication.

In cross-cultural communication, messages are not always delivered the way they are meant to be received. It is important to note that ‘cross-cultural’ does not necessarily mean between two nationalities as it also can be of different cultures or backgrounds between people. The messages delivered can be lost in translation and interpreted according to one’s own understanding and cultural background. There are many barriers that hinder messages from being delivered from senders to receivers in its original form and that includes gender, perceptual and emotional barriers among many others. In this essay, the focus will be on the barrier between genders: Male and Female.
Traditionally, gender is “the state of being male or female.” However, according to Monash University, gender represents the social and cultural construction of what is masculine and feminine, while sex refers to the biological sex characteristics that one is born with (Nobelius, 2004). In communication, the focus would be on the cultural and societal factors that affect communication and that has got to do with gender and the habits and characteristics that are associated with it.
Sandra Bem (1981) in her journal article, ‘Gender schema theory: A cognitive account of sex typing source,’ states that people’s attitude and way of behaving are based on ‘Gender Schema’ which is “a cognitive network of assumptions about the personalities and moral