A 10% boost in women’s confidence worldwide could change the course of history.
Do some of these statements apply to you?
- I often end up doing well on challenges that I was afraid I couldn’t do beforehand.
- I try to avoid being evaluated by others if I possibly can.
- I’m afraid that others may find out that I’m not as capable as they think.
- I find it hard to accept praise about my accomplishments
- I often compare myself to others and think that they must be more capable or intelligent than I am.
- Most successes in my life have largely been a matter of luck.
Many people feel that they are less able than others think they are – colloquially known as the ‘impostor syndrome’ – and on average women think this way more than men do. Yet it’s actually quite normal – and in many cases beneficial – to slightly overestimate our abilities, which men and boys do much more readily than women and girls.
This is the nub of something very important for the world. Women, on average, show less over-confidence than men. In 2011, for example, the London-based Institute of Leadership and Management surveyed 3000 managers across the UK. In response to the question How best would you describe your level of personal confidence, 50% of women answered either, I have a high level of personal self-confidence and rarely feel any self-doubt, or, I have quite a high level of personal self-confidence but occasionally have a few doubts about myself.
How many men selected these two options? – 70%. The response which might seem the most accurate and reasonable for most people – I feel fairly self-confident but do suffer doubts about myself as well – was chosen by 41% of women and only 25% of men. Women may actually seem to be underconfident compared to men. A more realistic assessment may be that men are more overconfident than is reasonable in a complex world.
Students at Cornell University were asked to answer the question Am I good at science? The men scored themselves 7.6 out of 10 on this scale, and the women 6.5. Much later their scientific reasoning was objectively measured, and the women performed the same as the men. Asked after the objective test how they thought they had scored, the women guessed 5.8/10 on average, and the men 7.1/10 (1).
Men oversell themselves compared to women. In the UK study of 3000 managers mentioned earlier, 35% of men answered Yes, I fully expected or hoped to, in response to the question When you started work, did you expect to take on a management or leadership role? How many women responded this way? – 23%. In the adult job market, women become progressively more of a minority at more senior levels. In negotiating with their bosses, they expect, and ask for, much smaller salary increases than do men of the same status and ability (2). Given the sobering barriers to women’s confidence discussed in the last chapter, modesty in salary requests may be a shrewd tactic.
So where does this all start?
A survey of almost 1400 8-18 year old Americans discovered that between the ages of 8 and 14, as they are entering the adult world, American girls show a 30% drop in self-confidence, while boys of similar ages show no drop (3).
There are many reasons for this, but one very important one is that women’s self-representation in their brains is more integrated with representations of their relationships, and men’s less so. Men’s more lonely individualism allows them to compete more ruthlessly than women. As a result, women tend to be somewhat competition-averse compared to men – though not when they are competing on behalf of their children, research shows.
Researchers in 2017 at Illinois University told 5-year-old children a story about a person who was really, really smart. They then had to guess which of four adults, two men and two women, was the person in the story. The girls chose one of the women mostly, and the boys one of the men.
But in six-year-olds, something strange happened – the girls’ preferences became boy-like, and they began to choose a man more often as the very smart person. They were then asked to choose between two new games, one of which was for children who were really, really smart, and the other for kids who really tried really hard. The girls who chose men in the first experiment were less likely to select the new game for really smart children (4).
As the girls abandoned their innocent impartiality about brilliance as they entered their sixth year, so another idea about femaleness replaced it. When asked to choose someone who was really, really nice, the six-year-olds opted much more often for a woman while the five-year-old girls did not.
So, tough forces are acting against women’s confidence, ones embedded in their own, and others’ brains from an early age. Is there any antidote to these?
The good news is that you can learn to be more confident. Here are some of the ways this can be done:
- Take action with a specific goal in mind – the so-called ‘implementation mindset’. Don’t spend too big a proportion of time deliberating or agonising over a course of action. Decide on a goal recognising that no goal is 100% certain to be the right one, and love your decision. Women become a little more healthily overconfident when in this mode of thinking and action.
- Remember that confidence is a belief, and beliefs can be changed. Its critical to have a ‘change mindset’ and to recognise that learning to be more confident is a bit like learning a musical instrument – it takes lots of practice, it is slow and some days you’ll feel like you’ve made no progress or even gone backwards.
- Bite your tongue if you hear yourself saying self-deprecating or self-protecting phrases like ‘this is probably rubbish but….’ – ‘Sorry that was terribly unclear – did that make sense…?’ ’I’m such a scatterbrain….’. These are all pre-emptive strikes to ward off anticipated rejection, but they sap your confidence and sap other peoples’ confidence in you.
- It is easier to act yourself into a new way of feeling than to feel yourself into a new way of acting. Acting and speaking confidently will always feel ‘fake’ at first – your gut will be twisting and part of your mind will be telling you that you are a fraud. This will diminish gradually over time, but you have to keep on doing the thing – holding your head high, speaking out clearly without self-deprecation and avoiding the self-protective make-myself-small boy pose that research shows saps your confidence.
- Set small goals that stretch you. Doing the thing you fear in spite of anxiety is one of the best ways of building confidence. Remember Rumi’s statement – The road only appears with the first step.
- Accept uncertainty. Your ducks can never be 100% in a row before you take action. You should accept a certain risk of being wrong in your decision or action. 90% of the time you will be right and your confidence will grow as a result. Don’t beat yourself up about the inevitable 10% of mistakes – rather, learn from them.
Professor Ian Robertson is a Neuroscientist and Academic Partner at The Leadership High
1. Ehrlinger J, Dunning D. How chronic self-views influence (and potentially mislead) estimates of performance. Journal of personality and social psychology. 2003;84(1):5.
2. Small DA, Gelfand M, Babcock L, Gettman H. Who goes to the bargaining table? The influence of gender and framing on the initiation of negotiation. Journal of personality and social psychology. 2007;93(4):600.
3. Ypulse. The confidence collapse and why it matters for the next generation 2018 [Available from: https://www.ypulse.com/article/2018/04/12/teen-girls-are-less-confident-than-boys-its-affecting-their-futures/
4. Bian L, Leslie S-J, Cimpian A. Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children’s interests. Science. 2017;355(6323):389-91.