Gender and self-confidence

Hello All:

I'm having a nice day so far how about you?  Every morning, I go through my emails and read the New York Times.  If you don't know this newspaper, I suggest you check it out (http://www.nytimes.com) because it's very well written and edited.  The Times does tend to slant liberal but they have a wonderful conservative columnist, David Brooks, who publishes on Tuesdays.  Today he published an opinion piece on gender and self-confidence.  This was in response to a new commercial by the personal care company Dove.  In this commercial, women were asked to describe themselves while a police sketch artists drew their pictures.  When he was done, the portrait was held up next to the woman for comparison.  The pictures portray the women as less than attractive.  This brings to mind the question is self-confidence and gender connected.  Do women tend to be more self critical than men?  Are women groomed from infancy to be less confident than men and how does this effect their adult lives?

Sheryl Sandberg, in her book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, addresses this issue as well.  In essence, she writes that women are given mixed messages.  First, their told be all that you can be.  Then, in the same breath, women and girls are told, if you want men to love you and your co-workers to accept you, you can't be too successful or assertive.  Does this thinking make sense to you?  It doesn't to me.  It's this rationale that leads women to make the decisions they make such as sacrificing career advancement for family before there is a family in the picture, choosing the partners they choose, taking the academic and educational paths they.  My point here is that women and girls appear to be taught from birth that it's o.k. to have goals and career as long you remember not show up the boys.  Thus, few women enter the STEM professions or seek advancement in the corporate world.  All this happens at the same time Men and boys are encouraged to be all they can be, reach the top of their professions without being asked to make any choices about family and life.

The Dove commercial also accentuates the fact that woman's appearance is directly tied to her self-confidence.  I'll admit to being a bit guilty of doing the same thing.  It's a rather interesting paradox.  In professional and social settings, a women's appearance is emphasized while a man's appearance is barely noticed.  You only have to watch award shows to see this in action.  The female actors are asked about their outfits while the male actors are asked about their work.  As woman, I'm offended by this.  Yes, I take pride in my appearance and have no compunction about leaving the house in the morning dressed nicely with hair and makeup but I would prefer people take notice of my work and who I am.  The pretty outside package is more for me rather than anyone else, as it should be.  I have my periods of self-doubt like everyone else.  However, I don't think that it's connected to the way I look.  Therefore, this commercial, which you can probably find on Youtube, really seems to contradict itself.  While advocating "real beauty," it subliminally hones the message that self-confidence and outward appearance are one in the same for a woman. That doesn't make any sense does it?