On my speech and debate team, we have a saying for confidence that we should “have 30% of the confidence of a white, lacrosse boy” to give us an idea of how we need to go into each round. That’s all to say, I’ve realized we really only say that around the women of the team and never around the men. This goes to say that women are typically perceived as meek and even in previous articles I’ve talked about, we’ve found that women tend to feel like they’re forced to downplay their accomplishments while men are encouraged to display them as a show of their competence. In this article by The Atlantic we’ve learned that the evolution of women’s confidence culture has changed so much to a point where it’s no longer taken seriously.
The common theme amongst today’s generation of advertisers is that confidence is the new “sexy” which in some cases is true, but to a point where it’s stressed too much. By explaining with inequality in the workplace and blaming it on the fact that women just need to be more confident isn’t a sustainable option for women moving forward. This only centers are one archetype of woman and while confidence certainly isn’t bad, by only allowing confident women to thrive in the workplace excludes women who might be more introverted but might be more qualified.
This all being said, women’s confidence culture is definitely something that we need to work on, but if we continue on the path of stressing confidence that much, it could quickly become a toxic culture.
