Why you underestimate yourself as a woman

 We women underestimate each other tremendously - that is the realization of my day. I have just come home freshly inspired from a seminar and had to think about a situation again and again: When each participant was asked to assess their previous knowledge in advance, grades in the range of 3-5 were consistently given. The majority of the participants were female. After a short while, the seminar leader stepped in between and explained that you usually underestimate yourself as a woman, while men give themselves a much better grade with the same previous knowledge. But why is that so?

Why you underestimate yourself as a woman

When I look back on my upbringing and on my social environment, I notice one thing above all: Being good wasn't always something great or was not always rewarded. Especially when you were at school you were often seen as a nerd, you weren't that popular and as a girl, ambition and determination quickly had negative connotations.

For my parents, it was mostly a matter of course that I would bring home good grades and it was almost normal. Instead, a bad grade caused a lot more buzz. And even at school, my good grades were no reason for me to brag because my friends couldn't always deliver the same performance. I probably don't need to mention that my blogging hobby was viewed rather crookedly. Blogging as a 17-year-old in a manageable city was more mockery than praise from others.

During my studies, my relationship with good grades and good performance finally improved. I was able to be more open about my successes and blogging was valued by my fellow human beings. But somewhere inside of me there was still the uncertainty that I would surely fail or fail completely.

How women perceive themselves

Perhaps you know the situation: You read through a job advertisement and 80% of the statements match you. But you can't do the other 20% at all. And that's exactly why you're not applying. This is exactly how it felt for most of the ads, although 80% is more than enough to get started in the job and a man would very likely have applied for the position.

In the book “Lean In” Cheryl Sandberg also writes, for example, that men are promoted based on their potential and women based on their previous achievements. This discrepancy shows how we perceive women and how we present ourselves: We underestimate ourselves, make ourselves small and do not celebrate successes, but look for the next task straight away. Instead of setting high goals and justifying goals that have not been achieved, we prefer to set smaller goals and be satisfied with what we have.

An important aspect here is our own self-perception - and it already begins in childhood. Nobody tells us that we should be successful and that we can be anything we want, which means that we too often keep ourselves small.

Back to the seminar

So when we introduced ourselves and most of the women (including me) claimed that they had little prior knowledge of content marketing, I realized that this was utter nonsense. Most of the women who attended the seminar came from marketing, studied business administration, or worked in the digital sector. Not only freshly trained women or young professionals, but also department heads have all said the same thing about themselves: that they had no idea about it.

When the day came to an end, most of them realized one thing: that they knew very well about it. Most of the participants have already introduced many approaches and strategies in their company and have already learned most of the basics. The wrong assessment of the morning was gone.

How you no longer underestimate yourself as a woman

That we women should be much more confident with our own abilities. We know we do some things well, but there are many things that are not clear to us. So make it clear to yourself what you can do and keep telling yourself about it - I still have to work on that. Because doing your job well is not a negative thing, but something really great that you can be proud of!