People use verbal communication to deliver specific meaning because it uses words to encode the message. The differences in goals of communication between genders causes a variation between the ways each sex expresses itself vocally.
Men seek control, and thus tend to talk over and interrupt others in conversations. Men value independence, thus they tend to take control and direct the course of a conversation and strive to illustrate dominance and superiority. They prefer solution-oriented arguments rather than emotion-based conversation, thus they limit personal and emotional expression.
Women seek to develop relationships and emotional connections while communicating, so they tend to share information about themselves more openly compared to their male counterparts. They maintain equality in conversations as they do not feel the need for dominance. Women generally value the conversation more than the outcome, as it works better toward building relationships.
Nonverbal cues in communication help deliver messages and/or reinforce verbal communication. Interpretation of these messages will vary from communicator to communicator. Other factors influencing these variances apart from gender may include culture, age, reference frames of the conversation participants and their frame of minds.
Males tend to keep a larger distance between their communication partners. This is due to the need for independence, while for females the higher proximity is due to their need to create and maintain relationships and intimacy. Still, both genders show liking by reducing the distance between them and the persons they are communicating with.
Females prefer the use of eye contact. Since direct eye contact is a sign of emotion, females will prefer it to enable more bonding while males shy away from it to reduce emotional interactions.
Men use more gestures while communicating. This is mainly due to their control need, as use of gestures demands attention from your listener and effectively communicates messages.
Women tend to use facial expression more effectively than men, as they exhibit emotion more than all other nonverbal cues. For example, women smile more than men.
Men seem more relaxed in their body postures. The relaxed pose is attributed to the need for domination and control.
Women are more adept at nonverbal cue interpretation than males because they pay more attention to the speaker, as opposed to men who prefer to take control of the conversation.