Asking for Help: Men vs. Women
Common wisdom and social-scientific studies hold that men are less likely to ask for help than women are, a phenomenon that spreads across arenas as mundane as asking for directions and as serious as getting help for clinical depression. But according to a recent survey, there’s one realm in which men are more likely to ask others for help faster than women are — technology.
The U.K. tech support service Gadget Helpline found that 64% of men didn’t read the manual before calling for help, while only 24% of women committed this tech-misdemeanor, according to the BBC. That means, in the asking-for-directions analogy, when it comes to technology, men are less likely than women are to scrutinize “the map” (i.e. the manual) before giving up and asking a stranger for directions.
The technology blog Gizmodo attributes this discrepancy to laziness on the part of men. I would go further and argue that it’s part of the same phenomenon by which girls tend to be more diligent students than boys. So, too, women are probably more likely to be diligent consumers, doing their research before coming to ask the teacher a question, or at least following directions more exactly.
Or, perhaps, knowing one’s way technologically is less a point of pride for men than knowing one’s way geographically. While men may be reluctant to admit that their innate sense of direction has failed them and they don’t know the way from point A to point B, they may not have the same expectation of being able to navigate the more specialized fields of technology, gadgetry and electronics on their own.
And ultimately, I think, men may just be so eager to get their new toys working that they don’t want to waste time trying to figure it out by themselves when they can get immediate help from a professional — and without even leaving the house!
I can perfectly understand that impulse, but men and women both would do well to stop for a brief moment to check on the basics before calling tech support. The survey found that 12% of men and 7% of women “simply needed to plug in or turn on their appliance,” a task for which most of us don’t need to consult the manual.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!
