Author Sinks Teeth Into the Gender Gap

By CONNIE KOENENN

June 11, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The world of gender studies is bustling these days with psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, physiologists and sociobiologists. And then there is Cris Evatt, dental hygienist.

Evatt, 48, has written several books on organizing your life, but her new book, “He & She: 60 Significant Differences Between Men and Women,” plunges into the controversial waters of gender differentiation. It’s a self-help book for a problem that, Evatt believes, remains largely universal.

And despite its Pop Art paperback cover and breezy editorial format, the book attempts to clarify the mysteries of why “he never seems to listen” or “she’s always talking on the telephone.”

Noting in the introduction that the divorce rate still hovers at about 50% with no sign of a downward shift, Evatt quotes Howard Markham of the University of Denver’s Center for Marital and Family Studies that “misunderstood gender differences are one of the biggest causes of divorce.”

Says Evatt, who has been happily married for five years: “I wrote this book for two reasons--first, my own curiosity and second, to help men and women get along.”

She spent two years researching contemporary books and articles on gender, combing through the academic debates: Are men and women becoming more alike or less alike? Are stereotypical roles blurring or becoming more pronounced? Are men’s and women’s differences essentially biological or the result of socialization?

Then Evatt distilled the information into a guidebook, designed to be picked up in a free moment by busy adults.

The 60 traits--including worrying, seeking attention, jealousy, friendship--are clustered into 11 chapters under specific headings, ranging from “Intimacy Seekers” to “Communications Gap.” A true-false test and a “Gender Tenscale” also aid in self-analysis.

At Berkeley’s Conari Press, Julie Bennett says the publisher chose the book because “it’s just an amazing compilation of observations from people of all viewpoints.”

The book lists 180 sources, from Virginia Adams’ “Getting at the Heart of Jealous Love” to Dan Zevin’s “The Secret of Boys Clubs Revealed.” It doesn’t purport to be the final voice on anything, Bennett adds: “It’s a good jumping-off point for people to examine their relationships with the other sex.”

For Evatt, the research experience was a lesson in self-understanding.

She grew up in Fresno, attended UCLA and went to Northwestern University to became a dental hygienist because it looked like a good career for women who wanted security and the freedom to pursue other interests.

“This was back in 1963, when there were different professions for men and women,” she said in a telephone interview.

She moved to Marin County, dabbled in the human potential movement and wrote her first book after hearing est founder Werner Erhard exhort a San Francisco audience to “look into your life, find something you do well and share that with the world.”

Evatt went home, looked into her immaculate closet, wrote a little book called “How to Organize Your Closet . . . and Your Life!” and was sent on a successful promotional tour by Ballantine Books, which published 100,000 copies.

The next book “came out of the blue” as Evatt pondered a string of unsuccessful personal relationships. “Like a revelation, I suddenly had the thought that there are two kinds of people (in any relationship)--givers and takers. I starting writing traits of both kinds on little note cards,” she says. Out of that came a 1983 book called “The Givers and The Takers,” which is now in its fifth printing at Fawcett.

Although Evatt hadn’t assigned gender to any specific giver or taker traits, her readers did. After the book was published, she received a “whole huge stack of letters from giver-women.” She didn’t get any letters from “giver-men.”

“I thought, ‘Wow! All these women listening to men being so self-centered,’ ” she says. That’s when she began researching gender traits, which led to “He & She.”

“The research was fascinating,” she says. “I’m not a reader, really, but for the past two years, I’ve been obsessed with this subject.”

Although Evatt discusses 60 traits and how they differ between men and women, her book is based on a primary theme: Women tend to be other-focused and men tend to be self-focused.

While recognizing that this could be interpreted as a sexist stereotype, she nevertheless thinks it can be a useful litmus test for most relationships. “My whole background is to simplify things, so this is gender differences simplified,” says Evatt, who is something of a simplification specialist: She has also written books on how to pack a suitcase and how to organize your entire house.

“This book doesn’t urge women to become more like men, or men to become more like women. It’s about retaining gender traits that serve us--both individually and collectively--and modifying or dropping traits that do not,” she adds.

Evatt says the research has changed her own behavior: “I used to be more clingy--and I tended to play second fiddle. I had to develop some independence before I could appreciate a man who valued what I was doing.”

Her husband, environmentalist-contractor David Williams is “an extremely balanced male,” she says. “His sense of self and others is equal. Actually, there are quite a few men like that, but you can’t really appreciate them until you become balanced yourself.”

A Question of Differences How well do men and women know each other? Cris Evatt’s book “He & She” opens with a quiz on gender differences. Here, based on a random survey of the sexes, are the most frequently missed questions by both men and women. Test yourself. Answers are on E13.

1. Women’s language is more direct than men’s. T------. F------.

2. Women try to change others more than men. T------. F------.

3. Respect is a major issue in the female world. T------.F------.

4. Men need more “space”--private time--than women. T------. F------.

5. Women respond better to stress than men. T------. F------.

6. Women are more decisive than men. T------. F------.

7. Men accept words at face value more than women. T------. F------.

8. Women avoid verbal confrontation more than men. T------. F------.

9. Women want to be married more than men. T------. F------.

10. Women have about one-tenth as much testosterone as men. T------. F------.

What’s Your Score?(The questions are on E12)

1. False