A conversation starter, by Bella
- Feb 2
- 1 min read
Updated: Mar 9
This conversation starter comes from Bella, reflecting on a pattern she’s noticed in her own life and relationship(s). She’s curious about whether conscientiousness in health, self-improvement, and emotional labour tends to show up differently across genders, and why that might be.
"I am curious to know if anyone else has noticed that it is more common for women to be conscientious than men. By conscientious I mean they follow rules and try to do the right thing, strive to improve themselves, go to therapy, keep up with health recommendations, avoid BPAs, buy aluminium free deodorant etc. etc. Men, from what I have observed, tend on the whole to be a lot more laissez-faire. They are more likely to be complacent in hetero relationships, while the women push for their relationship and for each person to be "better". Am I alone in this observation? Has anyone read anything about why this might be, or have any theories about this?"
💬 A quick note: replies can be easy to miss here, so feel free to add a new comment rather than replying directly. This isn’t a fast-fire space, it’s intentionally slower, and shaped for thoughtful engagement with the ideas themselves, rather than back-and-forth responses.
This is a very interesting idea and there is a lot going on here. But this I mean there are probably different reasons ands factors involved for each of the things you bring up. For example I think in older men there is still probably a lot of stigma attached to the idea of going to therapy as it concerns the concept of “masculinity”. I also think self-improvement content is often directed towards women which says something about our society. But I get the feeling a lot of it is the result of patriarchical norms in society. If a woman “lets herself go” she is more likely to hear about it but if a man does there aren’t really any…
Interesting and relevant. Three things immediately come to mind:
a) Man have a shorter life expectation than woman. This is largely due (to my knowledge) to much less preventive actions by man. I think it's one of the big public health initiatives how to get more man to use checkups.
b) Boys are performing worse than girls (on average) in school. So it starts early and is it the same "drivers"? Less "conscientious"? More thriving for "let me have it my way"?
c) On the other hand I think this is also a generational thing. Younger generation (overall but probably male more than female) are living much more healthier: Less smoking, less alcohol, more taking care of mental health etc.
This is so interesting because my immediate thought-response was, 'yes, it is'. I then thought to check the actual dictionary definition of the word against my instinctive understanding of it, and was humbled to read that whilst I would consider myself to be the more conscientious half of my relationship, the dictionary definition may as well be accompanied by a picture of my husband. Although, if I stop to consider where our conscious efforts are most heavily applied, they do track along quite gendered lines (domestic for me, household finance for him, parenting for us both).
I'm inclined to agree with Jeanne that it's first and foremost a personality trait, but that nurture then has a significant role to play…
Love this Bella! I have done no research so would love to see it if anyone has, but am not sure I fully agree with the thesis that conscientiousness (has to rewrite that word 3 times!) is gendered. I see it more as a personality trait. Listen to this podcast I listened to a while back it explains it a bit and touches (from memory) on exactly what you're asking. .https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/no-stupid-questions/id1510056899?i=1000653778637
I LOVED this podcast so much, unfortunately they've stopped producing them :(. But you can listen to all of them 3 times they are so interesting!!