Communicating Power and Gender

As a perceptive and outstanding assessment, Communicating Power and Gender examines the relationships between gender and power and how they are linked to and transformed by the communication process. Within this discussion a host of correlations emerge, crossing social, cultural, historical, political, and racial spheres. In order to anchor their discussion Borisoff and Chesebro define the terms gender, power, and communication, which provides an operational platform from which to view fundamental issues such as the effects of stereotyping and verbal and nonverbal communication by gender. The authors also consider four contexts that shape and influence gender socialization and sex-role constructions: mediated communication and gender roles in various media systems, early socialization in the home, the educational landscape, and women and men in the workplace. Our environment continually generates new kinds of questions and associations. The more we interact with others the more we realize that our relationships are not fixed—they exist in a state of flux. Communicating Power and Gender explores not only how gender-based issues affect us daily, but also how gender-based communication can be more sensitively, usefully, and effectively employed.