confidence gap

 

“I would like to go back to being a software engineer, earning the salary of a software engineer” - someone at work told me today. She was quite serious about it and was asking why such an option does not exist for someone to be in the same role forever. This is after nearly 18 years in the career. I was suggesting she take the power programmer route, to remain a programmer all her career since she wanted to do programming only, but as a specialist, earning higher and deserved compensation. 

I am not sure whether it is because of lack of confidence or self belief, but this reminded me of this article - “Confidence Gap”. Many of us suffer from “imposter syndrome”, that we will be discovered as faking our roles. But the article says, it is prominent in women. 

I hesitate to suggest reading this article, to be at the risk of “mansplaining” or being a “benevolent sexist” (effect of being educated about the unconscious biases), but I see many painful instances of women dropping off the career journey due to fatigue, health issues, lack of self belief, not being able to tolerate or work with idiots and fight the political battles, guilt of not being able to give enough time to family and lack of family support.

My experience so far is that a higher percentage of women in the team leads to more care for the people in the team, realistic project planning than taking too much risk, calling spade a spade, much more loyalty and respect for keeping time. I hope we can find more ways to reduce the drop off at later stages.          

Evidence shows that women are less self-assured than men—and that to succeed, confidence matters as much as competence.

Compared with men, women don’t consider themselves as ready for promotions, they predict they’ll do worse on tests, and they generally underestimate their abilities. This disparity stems from factors ranging from upbringing to biology.

Men initiate salary negotiations four times as often as women do, and that when women do negotiate, they ask for 30 percent less money than men do.

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.

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. 

Women are more likely than men to form strong emotional memories of negative events. This difference seems to provide a physical basis for a tendency that’s been observed in behavioral studies: compared with men, women are more apt to ruminate over what’s gone wrong in the past. Women seem to be superbly equipped to scan the horizon for threats.

Confidence is a belief in one’s ability to succeed, a belief that stimulates action. In turn, taking action bolsters one’s belief in one’s ability to succeed. So confidence accumulates—through hard work, through success, and even through failure.