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Evidence shows that women are less self-assured than men—and that to succeed, confidence matters as much as competence. Here's why, and what to do about it.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/the-confidence-gap/359815/
-- submitted from IRC
The elusive nature of confidence has intrigued us ever since we started work on our 2009 book, Womenomics, which looked at the many positive changes unfolding for women. To our surprise, as we talked with women, dozens of them, all accomplished and credentialed, we kept bumping up against a dark spot that we couldn't quite identify, a force clearly holding them back. Why did the successful investment banker mention to us that she didn't really deserve the big promotion she'd just got? What did it mean when the engineer who'd been a pioneer in her industry for decades told us offhandedly that she wasn't sure she was really the best choice to run her firm's new big project? In two decades of covering American politics as journalists, we realized, we have between us interviewed some of the most influential women in the nation. In our jobs and our lives, we walk among people you would assume brim with confidence. And yet our experience suggests that the power centers of this nation are zones of female self-doubt—that is, when they include women at all.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Francis on Sunday November 15 2015, @03:30PM
This is the result of feminists constantly insisting that women aren't as good as men in order to get a free ride.
I doubt I'd have any confidence either if I was constantly being told that I couldn't do things because they're hard and the people already doing them are jerks.
(Score: 3, Funny) by khallow on Sunday November 15 2015, @03:41PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2015, @03:45PM
To quote Apu
I don't know which part of that sentence to correct first.
Of course its the fault of those striving for change in this world that are causing all the trouble. Of course we have done nothing wrong and thus have no need to change. Everything was fine when everyone knew and stayed in their places.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2015, @03:47PM
The problem is they're often trying to fix problems that don't actually exist anymore in the countries they're trying to fix them in. That's the issue with third wave feminists.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Francis on Sunday November 15 2015, @04:45PM
Like the AC said. The problem here is that they're trying to fix things that are no longer broken while ignoring things that remain broken. Women in the sciences isn't a result of brokenness, it's a result of women choosing to take other courses of study or going into other fields. A lot of my profs in college were women, I'm not sure it was 50-50, but it was a lot closer than people suggest. In classes, it was usually 60-40 in favor of women, but once you leave college, things get worse.
So, you get a ton of attention to that and virtually no attention being paid to the lack of women in undesirable jobs like garbage collection and mining. And virtually no attention paid to the over representation of women in teaching.
At this point, it's women keeping themselves down more often than not. Men aren't typically the ones spreading lies about sexual assault rates, that's generally women. I can't blame women for not wanting to spend a lot of time in male dominated professions when everybody saying that rape and sexual harassment are likely results.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 15 2015, @03:47PM
You must know different feminists than I know. The feminists I know try to convince everyone that women are the better people.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday November 15 2015, @04:41PM
Superficially that's probably true. But, look at the subtext. Most of those things need to be "fixed" because women aren't doing well enough. I rarely hear them complain about men being overrepresented in jobs that suck.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 15 2015, @04:53PM
Yes, but their argument is that the women are under-represented because they are suppressed by the men, not because the women are worse at it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2015, @07:13PM
Yet, when real-world evidence does not bear this out, when rational women see that there is no patriarchy and men in general really do support them doing whatever they want, those sorts of highly intelligent women might take it as a sign that there is really something wrong with themselves. The cognitive dissonance of knowing you can do whatever you are capable of and the belief that first-world women are being oppressed surely is a very stressful experience with impostor syndrome [wikipedia.org] being the result.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday November 15 2015, @11:41PM
Like I said, superficially. That still comes out to women aren't as good as men, it's just spin put on their to keep the gullible from realizing what's going on. If we accept the notion that women are just as good as men, then how precisely is it that men are suppressing women? When's the last time that men could actually express an opinion to women without risking a trip to the HR department?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 15 2015, @04:14PM
That is probably a contributing factor.
More to the point, males have always been risk takers, and females have always been more careful. Virtually every field in which mankind has progressed, men led the way. That's not to ignore all the great women who have contributed to science, medicine, etc - but it's a fact that men are reckless, and women are careful. Males win their self confidence before they reach age 20 - or they probably never get it. Go out, get hurt, come home and lick your wounds, then go out and challenge the world again. Rinse and repeat, until you either give up, or you win. THAT is the secret of self confidence.
Also - men are built and conditioned to solve problems. Women, more often, want to talk problems out. AC made a post below about women collaborating. That's all well and good, but collaboration takes TIME. Maybe women are going to be right more often, because they collaborated, but in most lines of work I've been in, you gotta get it right NOW, not some day.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday November 15 2015, @06:13PM
Go out, get hurt, come home and lick your wounds, then go out and challenge the world again.
Insert obvious analogy with standard western dating game. Guys are trained to pursue and women are trained to select in that game. Add in the usual workplace biases toward physical attractiveness and mass oversupply/underemployment and you end up with hot businessmen who are sharks and go out there and get it done at the office in the day or at the singles bar at night, and hot businesswomen who are used to passively waiting for wave upon wave of men to crash ashore with ridiculous lines.