Actually, I am amazing
I was pointed to this nifty story by AWIS’ Washington Wire. Northwestern University sociologist Eszter Hargittai studies people’s opinions of their own Internet proficiency. During her research,
Hargittai noticed something she had not set out to find: that although the online skills of men and women were roughly equal, women, as a group, rated their proficiency significantly lower than did men.
"Not a single woman among all our female study subjects called herself an ‘expert’ user, while not a single male ranked himself as a complete novice or ‘not at all skilled,’ " Hargittai noted.
The implication?
"By underestimating their ability to effectively use the Web, women may be limiting the extent of their online behavior, the ways in which they use the Internet and, ultimately, the career choices they make," said Hargittai.
The ability to brag about your own skills is also a key factor for success in academia. It would be nice to think that you could sit quietly in your office or lab, doing good work, and the world would eventually notice. And to some extent, you can do this much more in science that in some other fields– eventually someone may need exactly the results you came up with, and will find the papers you have written. But unfortunately, it seems that a certain capacity for exaggeration is necessary at every level– in explaining to job search committees why your work will "revolutionize" the field, for example. Assuming that women are less likely and willing to do this then men (see Woman Science Professor’s post on differences in confidence between male and female graduate students, for example), what can we do?
Idealistically speaking, I’d love to say that we should work to build a climate where people are evaluated on their abilities and contributions and not just on their ability to bluster. We should. But I am thinking more short term. I think that we need PRACTICE. Similar to Woman Science Professor’s idea about a phrasebook for how to respond to annoying/harrassing comments… how about a phrasebook for describing the impact of your own work? All welcome to contribute here, men too!
One thing that may be helpful: pretend you are talking about someone else’s work– that can make it much easier to brag! I am not saying we should lie. But it’s useful to learn some self-promotion skills.
Great idea!
A hint I got, from a woman professor in my field, was to write the first draft of your resume or whatever using the word “we” - it’s so much easier to say “we presented the first evidence of” or “we conclusively showed” as it doesn’t feel so arrogant.
Then, have a stiff drink, grit your teeth, and change as many instances of “we” to “I” as you can possibly bear to.
Comment by MissPrism — July 22, 2006 @ 11:47 am
That’s a good trick, MissPrism. I noticed as I gave a talk recently that I kept saying “we”, even though I was the only person who’d done those experiments.
It would’ve been a lot easier to say “I” if I were talking about something that had gone wrong, of course.
Comment by immunokid — July 23, 2006 @ 7:07 pm
Train yourself to avoid all tentative constructions in speaking. “It seems to me” becomes “It is”. “I think we should..” becomes “We should..” Don’t qualify your recommendations or observations with “I think” or “maybe” or “it seems to me” or any other similar phrase. Just say it. If you feel like you are being rude and aggressive, you have probably hit just about the right tone!
Comment by Zuska — July 24, 2006 @ 5:28 pm