A popular book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" by John Gray has looked at the differences in language and behavioue between men and women.

These differences are summarised by Vishwalok Nath and here by Geoffrey Prewett.

Recently a counterblast called "The Myth of Mars and Venus" by Deborah Cameron was published and the Sunday Times (October 7th 2007, by Ed Caesar) highlighted the following four myths that Cameron believes Gray has created.

Myth 1

Women talk more than men

Nonsense says Cameron. In a popular self-help book, The Female Brain, the claim is made that women say 20,000 words a day and men only 7,000.
This statistic has been widely reported ... but has since turned out to be erroneous and based on no real research. It has since been removed from the book.
In fact a number of studies have found that men speak more than women, although others found that women speak more than men.

Myth 2

Men and women communicate differently

More hogwash says Cameron. Linguistic studies have shown that men and women share a 99.7% overlap in the way they communicate. If there are differences in the way the sexes communicate, they are infinitesimal.
The only real markers of difference between men and women are that women smile more and spell better, and it is, says Cameron, only a "moderate difference."

Myth 3

Men's and women's brains are hardwired differently when it comes to language.

This area, says Cameron, is more difficult. Brain scans show that, when men talk, they use almost exclusively the left-hand side of the brain, whereas women also use parts of the right side. But, according to Cameron, this has had no bearing on how we communicate.
The only proven effect of this neurological difference between the sexes comes in the case of severe brain injury. If men suffer an acute injury to the brain they are more likely to lose their speech faculties than women, because other parts of the female brain are able to take over.

Myth 4

Men interrupt more than women

The evidence suggests women interrupt as muuch as men do. Cameron argues that some men, naturally, will interrupt more than others. The dangers of grouping men together is that the differences between men and other men are more interesting.
When, and how people interrupt, argues Cameron, is much more about power and social relations than the genetic make-up of the sexes.

Both these popularist books have good points to make, and the research remains subjective to a large extent.
Which makes it ideal for discussion by groups of interested linguistics students ....