The female is generally more affiliative than the male. This can be seen throughout many mammals. The social structure of females is more interconnected and a lot more social bonds are created between females. Whereas, the social structure of human males, is more hierarchical - with different levels of social and physical dominance.
Physical dominance can be seen in primates such as chimpanzees where the alpha male is usually the best fighter, most aggressive and more built with muscle. Social dominance, which is present in humans, is levels of who provides the most survival value--social skills. All alpha males can provide more resources and protection (survival value) than anyone else. Females nurture the children and seek survival value off the alpha male. Alpha males are leaders that keep the community or tribe in order. Reproductive success in males is generally determined by competition, therefore males rarely form strong social bonds.
Females on the other hand, have the reproductive strategy of investing in the production of a relatively few offspring and reproductive success is determined by the quality of care and the ability to enable infant survival beyond weaning age. Females and infants form strong social bonds and female to female form strong social bonds. This is how evolution has made us. Females are affiliative, males are competitive.
Women are generally better at reading non-verbal communication than men. This is because, in evolutionary terms, women are mothers and need to be able to tell what a non-talking baby is communicating. Put a man next to 3 crying babies and ask him to figure out what the babies are saying. Most likely he'll say "They're just 3 babies crying." Put a women in front of the same 3 babies and ask her the same question and she'll be able to answer "This one's hungry, this one wants attention, this one needs sleep." The ability to read non-verbal communications is mainly an unconscious one. When women read the non-verbal communication they get a "feeling" of what the person is "saying." Men tend to be more goal oriented and, when they get stressed, want to get straight to the point. Whereas women, when in a stressful (such as an argument), want to get into every little detail about things.
This can seem that men maybe more logical, however, on a deeper level women are better at exchanging communications than men and she focuses more on what she feels is best for the relationship--as apposed to what supposedly matters in the argument. Women are relationship oriented. For example, when it comes to telling a man some bad news he would rather you be completely honest and blunt. Women on the other hand, would rather you still be honest but reframe it in a way that spares her feelings and keeps the relationship going. So, when women try to break bad news to men they do it wrong and when men try to break bad news to women they do it wrong.
Men and women don't communicate the same, if anything women communicate better. Men do communicate, we just do it analytically and accumulate words rather than non-verbals which are delivered and received unconsciously. Men are mostly dominant and competitive; which in an ancestral environment would provide a survival advantage for the species. Of course there are some exceptions, such as masculine women and feminine men.
