Crisis of confidence for women in the workplace?

There’s no denying that the gender gap still plays a role in women’s place and pay in the workforce. But there’s another factor that’s far less recognized when it comes to workplace equality: the confidence gap.

While self-doubt can hold women back from climbing the ladder, it’s also something that even the most successful women have experienced. And it seems as though women simply aren’t as hard-wired for confidence as men.

Those are some of the findings that Katty Kay and Claire Shipman discovered during the writing of The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance — What Women Should Know.

These two women are extremely accomplished: Kay is the Washington, DC, anchor for BBC World News America; Shipman is a political correspondent for ABC News and Good Morning America. Between them, they have six kids.

Yet Kay herself, who has interviewed dozens of world leaders and speaks several languages, admits to having felt unsure of herself during the course of her career.

“For years throughout my professional life I’ve been asked ‘How did you get to where you are?’ and I got to saying things like ‘I was lucky’ or ‘I was in the right place at right time,’” Kay says on the line from Washington, DC. “I could never think it was because I was able or because I worked hard or was talented; those were things I found very hard to say. There had to be some external reason, some excuse, for the fact I had done well professionally. I think that’s the case for a lot of women.”

In fact, there’s a name psychologists give for that crediting of outside factors for personal circumstances: “external attribution”.

“When things go well, women tend to thank things outside themselves, external factors,” Kay says. “When things go wrong, we tend to blame ourselves; it’s all our fault.”

Feeling unworthy of success or uncertain about one's abilities seems to be far more common in women than previously thought. For their book, Kay and Shipman interviewed scores of successful women, from lawyers to professional athletes to CEOs, all of whom had to overcome low self-confidence at some time or others. Even the head of the International Monetary Fund told the authors she has moments of self-doubt.

“Christine Lagarde … said she has to dig deep within herself find confidence before she goes into finance minsters’ meetings,” Kay says.

Clearly, women have made undeniable progress. They earn more graduate degrees than men do and make up half the workforce. Several global studies, including some conducted by Goldman Sachs and Columbia University, have found that companies that employ large numbers of women outperform their competitors on profitability measures. Yet men continue to be paid more, get promoted faster and outnumber women at the top.

Study after study shows ...

Evidence suggests that women just aren’t as confident as men.

In 2011, the UK-based Institute of Leadership and Management surveyed managers about how confident they feel in their careers. Half of the female respondents reported self-doubt about their performance compared with less than a third of male respondents.

A study out of Cornell University asked participants how well they thought they did on a quiz on scientific reasoning. The women rated themselves more negatively than men on their ability: on a scale of 1 to 10, the women gave themselves a 6.5 on average, and the men gave themselves a 7.6. When it came to how well they answered the questions, the women figured they got 5.8 out of 10 questions right, and men guessed 7.1. But their actual performance was almost the same -- women got 7.5 out of 10 right and men 7.9.

Hewlett-Packard did a review of personnel records several years ago and found that women working there applied for a promotion only when they felt they met 100 per cent of the qualifications listed for the job. Men, meanwhile, were eager to apply when they thought they could meet 60 per cent of the job requirements.

“We all feel unsure. Lots of men have come to us and said ‘We feel lack of confidence," Kay says. "The difference is that men often use those feelings of lack of confidence to power through and keep going whereas women tend to have those feelings and think ‘Oh, I can’t do that difficult thing, because I’m too nervous.’ Then you beat yourself up about being nervous about it.’

“It’s the reaction to the nerves that’s critical,” she adds. “It’s fine, it’s normal, it’s human to sometimes feel a lack of confidence, but what you can’t do is let that stop you from taking action, trying difficult things, taking risks, taking on new challenges, and keeping going when you meet a hurdle.”

The Confidence Code looks at the genetic traits of the quality as well as the way hormones affect one's level of self-absurdness (testosterone is associated with risk-taking, for instance). It also offers women words of encouragement and tips on how to acquire more confidence.

Those tips boil down to taking action, thinking less, and being your true self.

“Women aren’t so well adapted to the … self-promotion needed to let bosses know you’ve done well, to asking for pay raises, sticking your neck out and trying things when you’re not 100-per cent prepared,” Kay says. “We need women to learn that, and a lot of that comes down to confidence.”