Why are Women Less Confident than Men? Part 5

Have you ever felt that you are not good enough?  It is easy to look at yourself, what you do and to decide that you're not ready for that next step whatever it may be.  The truth is in life, you can keep perfecting as you go along until you get there and when you realise that you will find it really liberating.  Think about it this way.  Many top brands we know and love were not the final version when they were launched.  They have been updated and perfected over the years.  Does this make you love them even less?  Of course not.  You may not be the best now, but that should not stop you declaring yourself now and putting yourself out there for people to see.  For if you don't you never will and more importantly no one else will see you or your achievements either.

Women applied for a promotion only when they met 100 percent of the qualifications. Men applied when they met 50 percent. 

For decades, women have misunderstood an important law of the professional jungle. It’s not enough to keep one’s head down and plug away, checking items off a list. Having talent isn’t merely about being competent; confidence is a part of that talent. You have to have it to excel.

We also began to see that a lack of confidence informs a number of familiar female habits. 

Take the penchant many women have for assuming the blame when things go wrong, while crediting circumstance—or other people—for their successes. (Men seem to do the opposite.) David Dunning, the Cornell psychologist, offered the following case in point: In Cornell’s math Ph.D. program, he’s observed, there’s a particular course during which the going inevitably gets tough. Dunning has noticed that male students typically recognize the hurdle for what it is, and respond to their lower grades by saying, “Wow, this is a tough class.” That’s what’s known as external attribution, and in a situation like this, it’s usually a healthy sign of resilience. Women tend to respond differently. When the course gets hard, Dunning told us, their reaction is more likely to be “You see, I knew I wasn’t good enough.” That’s internal attribution, and it can be debilitating.

Perfectionism is another confidence killer. 

Study after study confirms that it is largely a female issue, one that extends through women’s entire lives. We don’t answer questions until we are totally sure of the answer, we don’t submit a report until we’ve edited it ad nauseam, and we don’t sign up for that triathlon unless we know we are faster and fitter than is required. We watch our male colleagues take risks, while we hold back until we’re sure we are perfectly ready and perfectly qualified. We fixate on our performance at home, at school, at work, at yoga class, even on vacation. We obsess as mothers, as wives, as sisters, as friends, as cooks, as athletes. Bob Sullivan and Hugh Thompson, the authors of The Plateau Effect, call this tendency the “enemy of the good,” leading as it does to hours of wasted time. The irony is that striving to be perfect actually keeps us from getting much of anything done.

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