What characterizes aggressiveness among women?

Aggression among women is a taboo topic, but real; Furthermore, it seems that during childhood, girls have the same angry behaviors as boys. However, as the years go by, they tend to find themselves more censored. Any manifestation of aggressiveness is seen as “out of place.”

However, in both boys and girls, it can have adaptive value. Anger motivates us to tell others that they have hurt us -Another question is whether the strategy we choose to communicate it is the best. With anger, deep pain or crying, children express what they cannot tolerate. Who are we adults to amputate their emotions?

Parents and caregivers can only support certain emotions and behaviors. Validate them and teach them how they can manage the energy and message that accompany each emotional state.

The hypothesis that we have been working with in recent years is that if during adolescence we teach girls that any display of anger is out of place, what we will be doing is promoting the internalization of anger. An inhibition that makes them more vulnerable to mood disorders, anxiety disorders or eating behavior, for example.

Aggression in girls is usually repressed or hidden.

The total repression of aggressiveness has a great cost on the mental health of adolescent girls

Being covert or disguised in many cases, we know less about aggressiveness in women. than about aggression in men. In fact, aggression and violence are often considered male problems.

There is some truth in this assumption. Worldwide, men are more violent than women. However, women frequently engage in other forms of aggressive behavior. The investigation reports that Women express their aggressiveness more indirectly.

Systematically inhibiting anger or anger does not make it disappear.. In fact, the most likely thing is that aggressiveness is internalized in the form of frustration and is channeled in the first way it finds permitted. If the manifestation of anger that is reinforced in girls is a contention that ends up producing sadness, this will be the way they will internalize. Before being aggressive, she will prefer to be indifferent, submissive and quiet.

The price of showing self-control instead of showing your emotions will be the open door for other behaviors and even physiological functions to go out of control. It is not strange that at the same time that certain behaviors and emotions are repressed in adolescence, others become uncontrolled. Episodes of binge eating, vomiting, insomnia, self-harm, etc.

An increased risk of relational violence

Indirect aggression occurs when someone harms another while masking aggressive intent (Björkqvist et al., 1992 ; Arnocky et al., 2012).

Women, in the need not to see themselves as “crazy, inadequate or extremist,” They repress all feelings of anger that sometimes leads to other types of more relational violence, even somewhat more than among men.

Indirect or relational violence takes its toll on girls. Bad answers, deliberately ignoring people in public, spreading rumors and intimacies, ridiculing or undervaluing them in front of strangers, etc. These behaviors generate helplessness, discomfort, anger, helplessness, frustration and aggression, just like a slap or a hit.

Not saying the aspects that you dislike about a person directly or not pointing out an aspect of the other’s behavior that hurts does not lead to an improvement in the relationship. Quite the opposite. Inadvertently, A person who represses everything they have to say about a relationship or their feelings will develop passive-aggressive behavior. difficult to bear for those around him.

Even so, women frequently engage in other forms of aggressive behavior, as explained in Deborah Sur Richardson’s study that analyzes forms of aggression in women. It reveals that women are at least as likely as men to employ indirect aggressive strategies and that the nature of the relationship is a better determinant of aggressive action than gender.

Research on aggression in women

Research consistently reports that Women use indirect aggression to an equivalent or greater degree than men. Indirect aggression occurs when someone harms another, while masking aggressive intent. This aspect was especially studied in the research of Kaj Björkqvist and his group.

Specific examples of indirect aggression include spreading false rumors, gossiping, excluding others from a social group, making advances without direct accusation, and criticizing others’ appearance or personality. The use of indirect aggression by girls exceeds that of boys from the age of 11 (Archer, 2004).

This difference persists into adulthood. Compared to men, adult women use more indirect forms of aggression in various areas of life (Björkqvist et al., 1994; Osterman et al., 1998).

In fact, in a large cross-cultural survey of female aggression in 317 societies, Burbank (1987) found that Female aggression was mostly indirect and rarely inflicted physical injury. Therefore, in the real world, aggression is common in women and girls, but the form it takes is largely indirect compared to men’s aggression.

Adult women use indirect forms of aggression.

Aggression in women: physiological factors

Several prenatal and postnatal influences increase the risk of aggression later in life, but most do not differentiate between men and women. Of the risk factors reviewed, the greatest evidence of sex-dependent effects is postnatal maternal depression, prenatal maternal malnutrition, and prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol.

As with men, the positive relationship between testosterone and aggression in women is small. There is some evidence that prenatal exposure to testosterone increases aggression in girls later in life, but the evidence is mixed.

The dual hormone hypothesis has had some success in predicting aggression in men, but less so in women. The data on estradiol and progesterone suggest the possibility that high levels of these hormones reduce aggression and self-directed harm in women. However, much more work is needed.

The literature on oxytocin suggests that the hormone can both decrease and increase aggression in women. The increases in aggression are likely due to a combination of the hormone’s anxiolytic effects, as well as increased reactivity to provocation.

A way to go…

The sample of most studies on the brain and hormonal mechanisms of aggression have been men. Others did not examine gender differences or did so in one study post hoc which was based on small samples.

Therefore, there is little opportunity to draw strong conclusions about how the reviewed processes influence aggression in women. In contrast, according to Richardson (2005), the behavioral data are clear that women tend to predominantly engage in indirect aggression.

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