Comment by rco8786

This all jives with my personal experience, as a male. I can't help but read this article and think about evolution. Specifically, that men were more likely to work together "side by side" toward a common goal (hunting an animal, etc) while the women stayed back at the camp and tended the fire, children, cooking, etc and were more likely to face each other to converse.

Deborah Tannen in particular has done quite a bit of research around the topic of gender and conversation. https://mtprof.msun.edu/Fall1995/shellen.html