Among my varied background was a time as an Organizational Development consultant which is essentially a cross between business, psychology, and in my case, sociology and a dash of industrial engineering thrown in simply because I was drawn more to the technical aspect of production than to the “touchy-feeling” part of let’s make everyone feel valued so they’ll work better. Not that I was an expert in any of those areas, but it was an interesting blend of disciplines. In the process of that, I did a fair amount of reading about gender differences as workplaces were becoming more diverse, and while there aren’t that many genuine differences, there are some that are notable. In the relationship world, this is what drove the highly popular, “Mars/Venus” books and all those spin-offs. The other day as I had to discuss a rather serious matter with my husband, I was reminded of one of the things that women don’t always handle well – having your husband (other significant male) watching television when you want to have “one of those talks”. Our tendency is to say, “Would you please turn that off/down?”, because we view it as a distraction.

In reality, even though women are often better multi-taskers than men, males, in general, are not as distracted by multiple sounds to the same degree as females are. They can listen to a conversation, read, study, and perform other tasks while listening to music, television, or radio. Now, does that mean that they won’t claim that to be a distraction if they happen to not like the topic being discussed? That, you shouldn’t bet on.