Lean In: Chapter 4
I think by the time a woman feels she’s ready for a new job
she is already over-qualified for it. I’ve
read in other articles as well as in this book that studies have shown that
while men are hired based on potential, women are hired based on historical
performance so I suppose a woman wants to ensure that each performance is
stellar so as not to muck up future inroads. Also, men apply for jobs when they
feel they can fulfill 60% of the role whereas a woman won’t apply until she
feels she can fulfill 100% of the role. Another example pointing to the same
insecurity or lack of confidence in women relative to men.
But that insecurity in women and confidence in men stems from
childhood. When a guy goes for gold and fails, he is pretty good about
getting back up on his feet, dusting the dirt off his knees and driving on.
That’s because growing up it was natural for him to get a scraped knee or cut
or bruise from playing and even rough housing with other boys. The terminology ‘boys
will be boys’ is an acceptance of this somewhat reckless male behaviour that
has limited consequences because it’s innate in them to be this way. But girls
are more delicate so if she falls we promptly pick her up, nurse her wound and
remind her to be more careful so as not to do it again.
I can attest to the fact that parents nowadays are more
aware of this and proactively try to level the playing field by letting girls
pick themselves off the floor and even running to the attention of their son
and kissing his boo-boo. But it’s a bit
of a catch-22 because women are different from men and require to be raised
a little differently.
No matter how you slice it if your 15 year old daughter goes to a
party that an older student is throwing on a Friday night and the party starts
at 10pm versus your son going to the same party, most parents will
have higher stress levels with the former scenario than the latter. The basis
of this worry is real. The stress is natural and playing fair takes a backseat
when you’re talking about the wellbeing of your kid.
So do women have a reason to be more cautious and careful
their entire lives? They sure do. So instead of trying to deny this feeling,
let’s accept it for what it is, embrace it (because I think it’s this natural
ability to experience a stimulus and respond swiftly knowing we’ve thought of
so many more scenarios in a millisecond, aka women’s intuition) and leverage it
to create our own path and drive on. Our journey will be different because we are different but the destination could be the same.
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