A couple of years ago, NASW member Marcia Barinaga posed a similar question in Science: "Is There a Female Style in Science?" After having spent twenty-odd years as a medical technologist in hospital, clinic, and research labs, I was intrigued by Barinaga's suggestion. I discovered that my experiences and observations were much like those of other female scientists that Barinaga mentioned. And I do believe that in some ways females approach science differently from males. Now that I've retired my lab coat and set up shop as a freelance writer of science and other literature, I'm interested in how a potential female style affects the reporting on science versus the performance of science.
Any theory that suggests differences between the sexes is controversial. That wouldn't have necessarily been the case four or five decades ago. Things changed in the '70s. Somehow the notion was generated that the sexes had to be the same to be equal.
The pendulum's swung back, it's now recognized that males and females originated on different planets, and so on. At the same time, linguistic researchers Deborah Tannen and Robin Lackoff have documented several differences in verbal communication styles between the genders. Their research, and mine as well, points only to differences in general between the sexes. Neither theirs nor mine implies that all men or all women do things in the same way. Where significant statistical differences do exist, however, it's assumed they are the result of differences in male or female tendencies.
Putting two and two together about gender styles in science and in communication (and in need of a graduate thesis topic), I embarked on a research project in early 1996. I decided to evaluate whether gender differences in both science practice and verbal communication styles might translate into gender differences in science writing styles. It seems they do.
To get an overview of current popular science literature, I selected 524 science articles published in 1995 by five publications. A keyword search string which included names of major science disciplines and other basic scientific terms netted 287 science articles from the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post via CD Newsbank full-text service. All bylined feature articles from Discover and Scientific American in alternating months (January's Scientific American, February's Discover, and so on) were also collected, adding another 237 samples. I analyzed the first 200 words of each article for four characteristics of style: readability, personal tags (references to human beings), definitions, and references to shared credit (collaborative results versus individual results).
Readability level and personal tags are characteristics of all writing genres. Science writers, though, have a unique obligation to define terms and to give credit to scientists and researchers for discoveries or opinions.
I found that science writers of both sexes write in equally readable fashion. Some variation occurs from publication to publication, but generally male and female writers for the same publication produce writing at the same readability level.Readability studies aren't universally cherished. Some would argue that such measures have nothing to do with style (I personally disagree). Reading level indices such as the FOG Index base their scales on sentence word length and numbers of multiple-syllable words as indicators of complexity of language use. If nothing else, they're entirely objective measures and provide a convenient place to begin a comparison. Apparently writers of both sexes are adept at judging what level of language and grammar complexity is appropriate for their purposes.
Differences between genders became evident in the other areas of the study, however. Female science writers used personal tags 28 percent more often than male science writers did. Tannen's 1990 book, You Just Don't Understand, proposed that males and females differ in communication style due to differing objectives. Men communicate to exchange information. Women communicate to establish relationships.
This could explain a female science writer's increased use of references to people, or personal tags. She's more intent on establishing human relationship, even in an article about plant biology. Mention of the people involved with a science story; who did the research, who will benefit, is apparently a popular method among female science writers for creating reader interest.
Writer Carol Krucoff, in her article "Exercise and Breast Cancer" which appeared in the Washington Post on February 7, referred to people by name, pronoun, or title 15 times in the sample. Krucoff stressed who was affected by research into exercise programs and breast cancer.
For male science writers, information is the main thing. Bob Condor, of the Chicago Tribune, included only four personal tags in his opening to a similar article about benefits of exercise: "No Sweat! Support for 'Exercise Lite'" on February 1. Condor focused on the mechanical effectiveness of several exercise regimens.
The above example is not necessarily typical, but illustrates the difference between treatment of similar subject matter by one male and one female writer. The average female science writer put just over 16 personal tags in each article sample. Male science writers as a whole included an average of just over 11 in the same size sample. The difference is statistically significant.
When a science writer defines a scientific term, two things happen. First, the reader learns something. Second, this new knowledge brings her or him up to speed with the writer. I think most science writers would agree both are important, but female science writers in the study put twice as many definitions in their stories as male science writers did.
This doesn't mean male science writers didn't define their topics. Some chose to use illustrations or analogies to explain a term. Some simply assumed the reader knew what AIDS or HIV or DNA was. While those assumptions may have been fair, the female authors didn't make them as often. When in doubt, she defined.
One of Barinaga's major contentions about a female style in science involves a female tendency to prefer working in teams over working individually to reach organizational goals. That tendency to value team efforts more highly than their male counterparts do may lead female science writers to emphasize more strongly when scientific discoveries or opinions are the result of collaboration. The female authors studied mentioned colleagues, research partners, or team members almost twice as often as the male authors did.
Sarah Richardson, a senior editor at Discover, reported on research results regarding gender differences in phonological processing in the brain in "S/He-Brains" (June). Collaboration, or shared credit references appeared five times in the study sample: 1)"authors of the study, pediatrician Sally Shaywitz and her husband, neurologist Bennett Shaywitz", 2) "...as codirectors of the Yale University Center for the Study of Linguistics...", 3) "...the Shaywitzes used...", 4) "...how she and her husband ended up discovering...", and 5) "The Shaywitzes studied..."
In contrast, Curt Suplee a Washington Post staff writer, on February 16 wrote "Scientists have found..." and "Yale University researchers report..." in : "Sexes Use Different Parts of Brain for Language Task, Scientists Find", which details the same research study. The Shaywitzes were eventually introduced, but beyond the sample studied.
In science, and particularly hard science, it's a man's world. To a large extent, women are used to being "shut out" of decision-making in the scientific community. A female science writer's sensitivity to that history of exclusion may prompt her to draw out the collaborators more diligently than a male science writer would.
What do these differences mean to us as science writers? Several possibilities exist. What's important is to resist the temptation to judge gender differences in writing styles in such a way that either a "male style" or "female style" is considered better than the other.
If we assume, as does Deborah Tannen, that both women on either end of a face-to-face conversation are interested in establishing relationship, we can also reasonably assume that a female reader is more interested than a male reader in the human relationship aspects of what she reads. In other words, female tastes differ somewhat from male tastes in reading material. Understanding taste and style differences can help writers and editors use these differences to appeal to their entire audience; or to target new ones.
Another important aspect of the study is the suggestion of factors that motivate males and females to communicate differently through writing style. Our experiences give us unique perspectives, and it seems likely that there is some gender distinction in perspective among science writers.
At a time when gender-neutral, politically correct language is still often and hotly debated, I don't mean to open a new can of worms. It just seems appropriate to analyze the state of your chosen profession now and then to gauge how it's doing; what's changing and what's not. The good news is that science writing is a flexible art. There's no prescribed formula for doing it right. It's clear that both female and male science writers are effectively informing the public about science.
And if I've offended or confused you by my subject matter, word choices or sentence structure, I apologize. Is it a reflection of my female style of thinking? Interesting question.
Janice Airhart is a freelance writer in Tulsa, Oklahoma.