Think about how often you claim you don’t know something.

And I’m not talking about your response to your roommates’ inquiries about their mysteriously missing supplies of computer paper or Parmesan cheese. I’m talking about the times you tack it onto the end of an explanation that’s thorough and thought-out, or use it to preface a clearly articulated opinion.

If you’re anything like me or the people I hear daily, you’ll probably find yourself using the phrase inappropriately on a regular basis. And if you’re a woman, these three unnecessary words may be contributing to what The Atlantic dubbed a “confidence gap” between men and women in an April 14 article.

Writers Katty Kay and Claire Shipman draw on multiple studies to prove that women tend to underestimate their skills and capabilities while men tend to overestimate themselves. And since they argue that confidence is just as important as competence on the ladder to workplace success, Kay and Shipman posit the confidence gap between the genders as one aspect that holds women back. The writers consequently encourage women to second-guess less and assert themselves more.

Several reactionary articles have challenged this call to action, validly arguing that male overconfidence should hardly be held as the ideal standard for success. But at the same time, I don’t see how some manifestations of female under-confidence — needlessly claiming ignorance, for example — serve to buoy a sense of community or reflect other female strengths in a work environment.

While mirroring male behavior and speech patterns should not be the end goal, women — myself included — only hinder themselves by habitually and thoughtlessly enacting self-doubt. Articles like Kay and Shipman’s should inspire questions about whether a professed lack of confidence is actually warranted, and female readers should choose their words consciously as a response.

Sometimes, of course, a lack of confidence is warranted. For example, I had no qualms about prefacing a question with, “This might be silly, but…” when I recently interviewed a student about the inner workings of race car. I truly had no idea.

On the other hand, the number of times I’ve phrased a statement as a question, even though I know the answer with nearly 100 percent certainty, is somewhat alarming. And I know I’m not the only student on campus to speak this way; these are patterns I hear in classes and on the Quad on a regular basis.

While employed by both genders to some degree, these stereotypically female speech patterns — tagging statements with questions like, “Right?”; peppering conversations with, “I don’t know”; or qualifying sentences with phrases such as, “This might not be right”— can carry damaging power when used by individuals who lack the ignorance to back them up.

Society undeniably needs a shift toward a greater respect for women and a greater value for female input, no matter how confidently it’s expressed. While this shift continues to inch along, however, women should think about whether their words actually reflect their thoughts.

For better or worse, a confidence gap between men and women does exist. And thoughtlessly relying on “I don’t know” as a space-filler is a needless way to perpetuate it.

Nicki Gorny is a junior newspaper and online journalism and Spanish major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at nagorny@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @Nicki_Gorny. 

 

 

 

Published on April 23, 2014 at 1:00 am