Gender Differences: Some Observations About Sensory Capacities

After more than forty years of marriage, I have concluded that there are differences between men and women in their sensory capacities.

Visual field perception

Research has found that men outperform women on spatial tasks, like visualizing how a 3-D object would appear if it were rotated in space. But there are other spatial tasks, where women out-perform men, that are rarely assessed. Perception of objects in the visual field is one of them. We have a place in our apartment near the entrance hall where I place garbage to be thrown out when we leave the house. I always see it when I leave the apartment and take it with me. My husband never sees it.  If I point it out as he leaves, he will gladly take it with him. Similarly, when we are cleaning up our home in expectation of visitors and I ask him to clean off the dining table of his papers, he often misses some. I have learned that if I want the table totally cleaned off, I will do a second scan after he finishes, and remove any remaining papers.  Some research has found that women have wider peripheral vision than men, so I have come to peace with these differences and realize that change would be difficult to achieve. He simply doesn’t see what I see.

Auditory acuity

Like most people with a telephone land line, we often get spam calls and do not answer the phone unless the phone screen shows that it is someone we want to speak with. The calls usually start soon after 9 in the morning. If my husband is sleeping, he doesn’t hear the phone.  I am usually up at that time, so I hear these calls. But even when I take a nap during the day, when the phone rings, it immediately wakes me. This reminds me of my experiences when our children were babies. My husband was willing to participate in childcare, but he rarely heard the cries of the children during the night. When I asked about this the next morning, he reported that he heard nothing. I suppose I could have awakened him and gone back to sleep, but since I was already awake, I just took care of it myself.  And perhaps, like differences in vision, this too is due to brain differences; some research has shown that women have greater hearing sensitivity at high frequencies. But I have finally figured out how to address this difference, since hearing something, and then responding to the need presented, can be seen as two separate activities. So now if I hear sounds during the night, I simply wake him to investigate the cause.

Multi-tasking ability

I am better at multi-tasking than my husband. While not a sensory ability, this gender difference often relates to household perceptions and behaviors. For example, I can do concurrent activities, like empty the dishwasher of newly cleaned dishes while I am preparing dinner, or empty the laundry basket of clean clothes and put them away when I am watching TV. And when I go out to do errands, I often do several during the same trip – I can do the food shopping, stop at the bank, and go to the pharmacy. When my husband does errands, he usually goes out with a singular mission. Recent research has shown that women are not better than men at multi-tasking (either concurrent or sequential), they simply take on more household responsibilities. Hmmm, this difference may still have some potential for modification of responsibilities and behaviors.

I know that many of these differences are not hard-wired, and not gender-tied; some men are very good multi-taskers, and some women may not hear an infant’s cries during the night. But I am still learning that being aware of these differences, and dividing up tasks at home that are best suited for each of us, can ensure that they all get done… most of the time… eventually.