The great poets notwithstanding, when it comes to communicating in general, and love in particular – women do seem to take more care. Statistics on phone calls are a little hard to come by but text messages and flower purchases yield some interesting data.
Men may buy more flowers overall on Valentine’s day than women; 64% against 36%, which is entirely to be expected given the modern tradition but, when it comes to real communication, women invest more.
A Sheffield University study showed the average length of text message (measured in characters per message) based on Sender & Recipient gender, to be:
Men to women: 74,
Women to men: 80,
Women to women: 82,
Men to men: 60.
Not only do women appear to invest more in communication they also spread the love around. Flower purchases on Valentine’s Day for close family other than Spouse were twice as high for women than for men to the following recipients; Mothers, Children, Grandparents and Sisters. And, they don’t forget the rest of their family when it comes to expression of love – women send four times more flowers on Valentine’s day to other relatives than men.
Interestingly, depending on which statistics you look at, between 15% and 22% of women also buy themselves flowers on Valentine’s day – against only 2% of men.
Information about the history of Valentine’s day can be found on Wikipedia.
Pay Phone Footnote:
AT&T Inc. have announced plans to exit the shrinking pay phone business in the USA by the end of 2008.
Mark Thomas, the proprietor of payphone-project.com remarks on the possible demise of the communication facility in the face of competition from phones that double as cameras.
“Pay phones are lifelines for the down and out; their booths are rainy-day cocoons. You lose those, and you lose a lot of windows on the human condition”.
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Sam Haskins, Valentine