ARCHIVE: The Confidence Gap
Originally posted on Facebook on July 19th 2017 about the Atlantic article "The Confidence Gap".
This article is a work of art. It's one of my favorites. A long but compelling and satisfying read.
My one critique is that the authors broadly talk about "men" and "women" without clarifying what those terms mean. Because they don't touch on identities other than gender, I think "men" really means an especially privileged class of men. I would be interested to see research on how race, class, sexuality, ability level, and other identities affect confidence for both women and men too. A few of excerpts:
"A review of personnel records found that women working at HP applied for a promotion only when they believed they met 100 percent of the qualifications listed for the job. Men were happy to apply when they thought they could meet 60 percent of the job requirements."
"Dunning has noticed that male students typically respond to their lower grades by saying, “Wow, this is a tough class.” When the course gets hard, women's reaction is more likely to be “You see, I knew I wasn’t good enough.""
"But while being a “good girl” may pay off in the classroom, it doesn’t prepare us very well for the real world... If life were one long grade school, women would be the undisputed rulers of the world.”
"Boys’ mistakes are attributed to a lack of effort,” she says, while “girls come to see mistakes as a reflection of their deeper qualities.”"
"When women don’t act, when we hesitate because we aren’t sure, we hold ourselves back. But when we do act, even if it’s because we’re forced to, we perform just as well as men do."
This article is a work of art. It's one of my favorites. A long but compelling and satisfying read.
My one critique is that the authors broadly talk about "men" and "women" without clarifying what those terms mean. Because they don't touch on identities other than gender, I think "men" really means an especially privileged class of men. I would be interested to see research on how race, class, sexuality, ability level, and other identities affect confidence for both women and men too. A few of excerpts:
"A review of personnel records found that women working at HP applied for a promotion only when they believed they met 100 percent of the qualifications listed for the job. Men were happy to apply when they thought they could meet 60 percent of the job requirements."
"Dunning has noticed that male students typically respond to their lower grades by saying, “Wow, this is a tough class.” When the course gets hard, women's reaction is more likely to be “You see, I knew I wasn’t good enough.""
"But while being a “good girl” may pay off in the classroom, it doesn’t prepare us very well for the real world... If life were one long grade school, women would be the undisputed rulers of the world.”
"Boys’ mistakes are attributed to a lack of effort,” she says, while “girls come to see mistakes as a reflection of their deeper qualities.”"
"When women don’t act, when we hesitate because we aren’t sure, we hold ourselves back. But when we do act, even if it’s because we’re forced to, we perform just as well as men do."
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