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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) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Sunday November 15 2015, @05:45PM
That is an American cultural thing. Now let's compare the situtation to other countries.
Off the top of my head, the Japanese appreciate modesty and punish arrogance. If what these feminists said were true, women should be (ceteris paribus) underrepresented in the US vs. Japan. That is not the case; in fact I'm afraid everything I've heard says that the Japanese job market discriminates severely against women. Of course all other things are not equal. But I think you would agree that US women are better off than most of the world. Plenty of places out there where a meaningful career is not only difficult but impossible.
There is no grounds, I would say, to complain about a "confidence gap". There is grounds to complain about how US managers reward arrogance and psychopathy. There is also grounds to complain about the treatment of women in many countries—trying not to start a flame war but it must be said—where the religion and culture deny them the most basic rights. Where they are beaten, raped, bought and sold, killed as infants, and worked to the bone. Where they are gathered in abusive harems by powerful men while less powerful men fight over scraps—more often than not to the detriment of those women.
"Third wave" feminists make up discrimination where none exists because they are too cowardly to address the real problems. The problems do not affect themselves so they don't care. What does affect them is their hatred of men, and how they can benefit personally by imposing discrimation against men in their own societies.