Have you ever noticed how certain topics seem to take off and suddenly they’re
everywhere? That seems to be the case right now on the subject of career
advancement for women. Oh, it comes with many names. At work these days, we’re seeing videos and
material on Gender Diversity; last year it was Sheryl Sandburg’s book Lean
In; a few months ago, it was a Ban
Bossy campaign also promoted by Sheryl Sandburg.
While they all touch on different elements of the topic, one theme that
stands out is self-confidence. The last
article to come across my desk was The
Confidence Gap. It’s point? “Evidence
shows that women are less self-assured than men—and that to succeed, confidence
matters as much as competence.” The article gives numerous examples of how
we women hold ourselves back because we are not as self-confident as men. Whereas a woman might not apply for a job
because she feels she has only 60% of the skills required, a man would more
often go for it.
We women also make the mistake of thinking that when we keep our head
down and do exceptional work, someone will notice. NOT!
This article and most of what I’ve read recently advises that we need to
be more self-promoting, something that does not come naturally to us. And, we don’t always have to be the ones who
offer to take notes in meetings, the low-key, low-profile task that a man could
do just as well.
All of the recent press on this topic reminded me of a book I read in
the 80’s called The Cinderella Complex, particularly
when I read this segment in The
Confidence Gap:
“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?”
The concept I remembered from The
Cinderella Complex was exactly that. Somehow, we often fall prey to the
notion that sooner or later everyone will figure out we’re not as good as they
think we are—that we’ve just been lucky and really aren’t all that
talented. We really believe that about
ourselves. Oddly, when I googled the
book, that was not the theme that was referenced. Instead it was that we women were/are all
waiting on Prince Charming to sweep us off our feet and take care of us. Now, why didn’t I recall that point? Could it be because I was the primary bread
winner in my house in the 80’s and 90’s?
Perhaps.
The memory that made me laugh, though, was that I had a friend who
always said, “It’s all Walt Disney’s fault; he told us we’d find Prince
Charming.” When I repeated that to a
child I was babysitting one weekend, he replied, “But Aunt Kathy, your Prince
Charming won’t come on horse; he’ll have to be in a taxi.” Yes, out of the mouths of babes…
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