Are women really more emotional?

I am often skeptical with the perception that 'women are emotional'

Where is the evidence? Either textually or observation or argumentation no one has been able to convince me that women are created more emotional than men.

Besides, what is emotional? What is emotion? As Maher Zain sings..."what about anger, love and pain, can you touch them with your hands so are they really there?"

Surely we can feel emotion but can we quantify it, can we judge it? Emotions are the feelings that we feel and there are various strands of feelings such as love, anger, pain, disappointment, happiness, sadness, jealousy and much more...

So, if emotions are feelings but where do they come from? Does it come from the brain, the heart, the lungs, the liver or the kidney? Are they simply carried by hormones, neurotransmitters or electrical impulses?

The Prophet SAW says that """Every child is born in a state of Fitrah"

If we study a baby of either gender...the baby is pure with no concepts but the baby has needs such as the need to eat, the baby feels hunger. As the baby grows, he or she will start to explore the world out of curiosity to attempt to reach out to objects...at this point there is no distinction between a boy or girl baby. They both laugh, they both cry.

So, what we can observe is that human beings are born with instincts. The instinct to survive (gharizatul al baqa'), the instinct to worship (gharizatul at-tadayyun) and the instinct to procreate (gharizatul al nau') and it is from these instincts that emotions manifest itself. In other words, emotions are a manifestation of the instincts.

When someone comes to attack you, you may feel scared or angry. When you look at a beautiful scenary, you may feel aweness towards the Creator. Hence, emotions are simply the manifestation of instincts and instincts are present in both men and women. One cannot claim that only women have instinct whilst men do not.

So, men and women can 'feel'. So, when two men argue and they feel angry and they start to fight one another...is that not emotional?

Maybe through observation, one might think that women expresses emotions better than men but does that make them more emotional?

Perhaps, we can argue that women are more 'irrationally' emotional than men e.g.
Husband comes home after a long stressful day at work, he just wants to put his feet up and watch TV. He is not his cheerful self. Wife senses this and start asking "is everything ok?"
Husband: "yeah..everything's fine" (he just wants to forget about work and relax)
wife: (there's something wrong...why doesn't he share his problem with me?) Wife says "can you tell me what is wrong?"
Husband: "No, nothing's wrong" (well, nothing is wrong now. I'm back and home and I want to watch TV)
wife: (He doesn't want to share his problems with me...he doesn't love me)

So, is this a typical situation of men versus women? Maybe! but can we conclude from this that the women is more emotional than men? or the fact that she has not understood the reality of work, feel empathy towards his situation and take a pragmatic approach that if he wants to talk, he will talk. It would not be a problem if she just says "okay, well if you need to talk, you know I'm here" and then get on with whatever she's doing.

So, are women more emotional? or maybe less pragmatic?

And if the women are less pragmatic, is that innate or is it due to upbringing? This nature versus nurture argument. Men are generally brought up to have more responsibilities such as financial, as a protector, a leader. Pragmatism is a quality required in fulfilling these roles. Leaders are trained to be able to handle their own emotions and others, they need to think about problems and solutions so, is it possible that boys are taught to express emotions differently through what is expected of them and their responsibilities?

I do not believe that Islam dictates women to be emotional rather if we look at the examples of the sahabiyyah we will find strong women with strong minds that became the backbone to great male leaders.

After the treaty of al Hudaibiyah, the companions of the Prophet SAW were disappointed and failed to follow his instructions to shave their heads and slaughter the animals as a symbol of their hajj. They were devastated that they could not perform the hajj on that particular year. The Prophet SAW confided in his wife, Safiyyah who advised him to carry on and shave this own head and sure enough, after noticing the actions of the Prophet SAW, his companions followed.

When Abdullah ibn Az Zubair fought a battle against al Hajjaj and things were getting intense. He lost a lot of his supporters due to their fear of Hajjaj. He knew that if he was to face Hajjaj on that day, he would be killed so, he sought the advice of his mother Asma' bint Abu Bakar. Her advice to him was:

"It's your affair, Abdullah and you know yourself better. If however, you think that you are right and that you are standing up for the Truth, then persevere and fight on as your companions who were killed under your flag had shown perseverance. If however you desire the world, what a miserable wretch you are. You would have destroyed yourself and you would have destroyed your men."

So, there is strength in women as well as strength in men. Both men and women have been created with instincts and able to express emotions. It is only how we choose to express our emotions, how we handle it and how much we allow our emotions to control our behavior.

I don't believe that women are more emotional than men and even if they seem to be, the only likelihood explanation is that it is due to conditioning and cultural expectations.