Before reading this article, I will pose a set of questions and beg that you consider their implications and possible methods of answering. Ponder what they mean in the context of your own life and consider the answers that are most accurate to your personal experience:
1. How would you best describe your level of confidence in professional, academic and business settings?
2. To what extent do you believe confidence to be an important factor in accessing opportunities, achieving goals and completing general responsibilities?
3. Do you consider confidence to be more of a benefactor or a hindrance? Is it better to have more or less confidence when pursuing career goals and upholding leadership positions?
Assuming you have taken the time to note down some responses to these questions, I now want to ask that you look at your answers through a critical lens by asking a series of follow-up questions:
4. To what extent do you think your gender identity has shaped your view on confidence and its necessity in everyday life?
5. How do you think the answers you provided differ from those of your gendered counterpart?
6. Do you think gender identity matters at all in the discussion of confidence?
With a simple online search, you’ll find an array of information, research studies and scholarly articles being shared on this topic: the implication of gender roles in the perceived necessity of confidence. And if you look in my writing journal, you’ll find me contemplating similar ideas in the scope of my own life. The notion of confidence plays a pivotal role in how we carry and perceive ourselves, and it tends to differ depending on who you ask. Now that you have so graciously answered these questions, I will reciprocate the vulnerability and share with you my own answers.
1. I believe my level of confidence to be considerably high. I have never found it a struggle to ask for clarification or help in obtaining things that I know will benefit me; I have even at times been told that my confidence has come off as “arrogant” or “intense.”
2. From my personal experience, confidence is an absolute necessity. There have been countless situations in my academic career that if not for my surplus of confidence, I am confident that my qualities would have been overlooked for someone either more outspoken or more conceptually desirable (and that is not to say more qualified).
3. It is better to have more confidence than less. To have less confidence would be to sell yourself short, and fail to establish your presence as an asset or leader. Confidence is necessary for people to view you as a legitimate actor, and it would be much more difficult to be an effective leader if you did not carry yourself in such a respectable and self-assured manner.
4. My identity as a woman heavily influences my idolized view of confidence. When considering issues such as wage gaps, employment inequality and everyday gender discrimination, it is difficult to allow myself the luxury of being anything but confident. Confidence is a tool for women, and to under-utilize it means being overlooked and underpaid.
5. For the sake of this article, I cheated a bit and asked my male-identifying father. His answer drastically differed from mine; where I find confidence to be an absolute priority every day, especially as a leader, he finds confidence to be the last thing he worries about. He doesn’t find it important to consider, and while he believes he is perfectly self-assured, he finds too much confidence something to fear. In his mind, too much confidence is arrogance. It creates a barrier between you and others when you should be focusing on humility and genuine relations.
6. Yes, I think gender identity matters in discussing confidence and its implications. Reflecting on my father’s and my answers, I have my ideas of where the disparity originates. Where I feel I need confidence to establish my character as capable and skilled, my father in his male role doesn’t need to complete this step. In a male-dominated society, he is already established as legitimate and reputable, whereas many women are not. Gender matters for confidence because it changes the inherent ways we view it. While men can have it or they cannot, they will either be labeled strong-willed people or humble, quiet men. Women, on the other hand, need to be more confident and learn to chase after their needs, or they could be like me and have so much confidence that they walk the line of arrogance and annoyance.
When living in a society where gender bias is rooted so heavily in our working institutions and processes, I hope these questions served as a small reminder that the biases and fallacies we hold impact our actions and views of one another. This is a Women’s History Month reminder to learn and unlearn, be conscious and be kind.
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