It is a commonly held masculine belief that when nothing else works, a woman will burst into tears. Alas, as most of us women know, there is more than a grain of truth in this. But do women deliberately turn on the tears to get what they want? Contrary to what most men think, this is emphatically not so. To be able to cry to order is not easy except for Oscar winners such as Jane Fonda, who, you might remember, once recommended that a woman who could not get what she needed should become a damsel in distress and open the floodgates!

However, Jane Fonda’s advice notwithstanding, the truth is that women do not turn to tears in order to manipulate a situation. What bring on the tears are provocation, frustration, and an inability to put across their point of view. While a husband shouts in an argument, his wife will break down and cry. If an obdurate son refuses to heed his mother despite all her pleading, she will dissolve into a flood of tears.

And if a male executive thumps his table in righteous anger, his female counterpart will withdraw into a corner to have a quiet cry. So are these tears the chief weapons in her armoury that she uses to further her own ends? She will deny it vehemently. However, nowhere are a weeping woman’s suspected wiles more sceptically viewed than by her male colleagues in the office.

Extraordinary though the subject may be, there have been various studies conducted on the subject of professional women and their tears. Though the majority of women interviewed admitted that they did cry at work, not one said that she cried in order to manipulate the boss. The chief reason for tears, they claimed, was the sheer frustration at not being heard!

And how do men handle women who cry in the office? With resentment. While on the one hand they are convinced of an ulterior motive, on the other they feel the need to comfort them! An explanation for this paradox is offered by psychologists. The resentment, they say, stems from the fact that though men are moved to sympathy, they do not know how to handle the situation. Should they reach for the Kleenex or should they put a comforting arm around the person weeping in their office or what?

But these women are seeking neither Kleenex nor comfort! What they want is that the issue they are angry about should be addressed. What they don’t want is to burst into tears. Crying, they insist, merely demonstrates that they are out of control and makes them more vulnerable. They would far prefer, instead, to bang on the table and shout and give as good as they got. Their tragedy is that they are seldom able to.