What difference does gender make? - by Ian Wood
Before I began counselling children in primary schools, I carried with me preconceptions of how counselling sessions would play out when working with such young individuals.
I imagined working creatively with girls; maybe drawing or colouring, as they spoke openly and freely about the issues they were facing in their lives. In contrast, I imagined my work with boys would be focused on playing games or maybe building with Lego blocks, as I struggled to get them to speak or talk about the feelings surrounding what was troubling them.
Surprisingly my experiences have been far from these expectations. I have worked with girls who want nothing more than to sit quietly as we play Jenga, boys who want to create comic strips to help them explore difficult life events. Those of all genders who struggle to deal with their emotions, and those who are so desperate to tell you their tale it tumbles out of their mouths.
What has really struck me was my own bias, how my own expectations of how girls and boys would respond to working with a counsellor differed from reality.
Even as a male myself I still presumed that boys would be less willing than girls to talk about how they were feeling.
My experience has led me to consider and wonder whether perspectives surrounding gender and emotional articulation are accurate. And that perhaps the emotional disparity between the genders are manufactured rather than born.
We are in the midst of a mental health crisis, where societal influences impact both genders: with some men not seeking help with their mental health as society still views this as something men don’t do; and some women feeling like failures as they find it difficult to express their emotions in a world that tells them that women are good at talking about their feelings . It all feels very binary…men = bad at talking about feelings, women = good at talking about feelings and if your experience is different to this then there’s something wrong somewhere.
This imbalance must be equalised, and it must begin at a young age. I find that when primary school aged boys are given the space, opportunity and permission to explore their feelings and their place in the world, they engage wholly. And equally when girls of the same age are allowed a freedom to express themselves in different forms of communication other than talking, they too grow a new understanding of self. So maybe our focus needs to be on creating connections with these young children regardless of gender so they can find their own voice via whatever method or way suits them.