Do men and women have different priorities?

Host: Do men and women have different priorities?

Gloria Macdonald: Men and women have very different priorities and this come from literally millions of years of evolutionary psychology and there are things that are ingrained in us. So women are wired to build relationships. Think about the back, in the cavemen days, women stayed at home in the cave and their sole purpose was to procreate, to have babies and to hold the family together, form an emotional bond. Men on the other hand, their priority is competition. Again, if you think back to the cavemen days men had to go out and they literally had to kill the food. They had to kill the food and women would do some gathering. They gathered food, but the men were the ones who had to go out and kill the food.

So if a man was standing there, they did not have the luxury of standing across from some guy with a poison arrow, saying, hmm, I wonder if he is friendly, maybe I should bond with him, maybe I should start having conversation with him. They had to defend themselves. So women have always been responsible for relationships and bonding and men have always been -- their priority in life was competition because they needed to win to protect themselves and their family.

So if we think about it today, nothing are change in more and more with our daughters and young kids growing up, but for most us who are adults even if you are in your 30s on up, most women weren't really, really competitive in sports, growing up, like men were. A group of guys in high schools they will go out; they go, play a game the basketball and one team would kill the other. Then afterwards they shake hands and they could still be friends. Women on the other hand, the only thing we really competed over when we were growing up, were guys. If another woman won the guy, you did not shake hands afterwards to say, chee! That was a great game. Congratulations! You were great. It just does not work that way.

So everything in our experiences as women has been about bonding and creating relationships and for men it really has been about competition.