To ask you to tell me the first person who comes to mind when you hear the word…

[011899988I9991197253]

“Confident”?

Sorry for the cryptic ask, but I will explain my reason in a while.

Anna Richardson for some reason

Me

How I feel most if the time

My cousin

At risk of derailing thread 😬 Anne Boleyn was pregnant when Henry married her, Anne’s older sister had already given Henry an illegitimate son, and he was convinced Anne would have sons too. His first wife was infertile and if he didn’t get a legitimate heir, the country would be straight back into a war over succession. The War of the Roses lasted 30 years and Henry grew up in its aftermath.

Ironically Anne bore Henry Elizabeth I who kept the country stable for 44 years, but he assumed a girl was useless and so killed Anne.

Yes, I know, thanks (covered the Wars of the Roses and Reformation in A levels and have read a lot about it since, so pretty up to speed).

Spot on!

I was at an employment law conference this morning and a speaker was saying that some countries are looking at classing “confident” as discriminatory language (I googled afterwards but can’t find evidence of this- that said, it’s a difficult one to google) as the word is only used for women and often in a negative way and is now perceived along the same lines as “emotional”- only used to describe a woman whereas a man displaying the same emotions would likely be described as “passionate”.

Her point was that describing a woman as confident suggested arrogance, and then describing a woman as lacking confidence was a discriminatory way of not promoting/hiring her, whereas nobody will overlook a man because they don’t think he’s confident enough.

It just struck me as very odd. I’d never associated the word “confident” with either sex. That said, I’ve been managing big teams for years and, objectively, definitely see more women with confidence issues than men.

The reason for this thread was to get an understanding of whether people would automatically name a woman, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. It was for the first few responses, but evened out across the replies.

Kellie Jay Keen-Minshull

Unfortunately...............

Boris Johnson & David Cameron (probably a public school confidence class thing)

On the good side:
Deborah Meaden, Karen Brady, Oprah

Me.

It's how people see me.

If someone described me, a woman, as confident I wouldn't regard that as a negative - in fact I'd be pretty happy with it as a description of me. Who are they saying regards it the same way as emotional?

Liz Truss, so confident she ignored all criticism of her plans. Oh and Nicola Sturgeon’ as well ignoring all input in her overconfidence that the self ID bill is not going to harm women and girls.

Woman. A random woman on a Tena lady ad.

One of my students

New Zealand!

But my googling is showing nothing.

My team is predominately female and I always used “confident” as a positive thing but that conference has made me rethink it.

I genuinely don’t think it’s a negative word at all. Personally, I’d love to be more confident in certain aspects of life.

Meghan Markle, but it’s not meant as a compliment to her.

My kids!

I wish I could describe myself as confident :-( <not point of thread i know>

I'm not confident
Too much of a people pleaser

Ah you see I was going to say. “Boris Johnson, and not in a good way”

But maybe this comes under the same heading as Henry VIII

In real life, I’d say both of my younger brothers are very confident.

My daughter.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Emma Radacanu
Lizzo

Matt Handjob.
Totally misplaced obviously but blithely unaware and supremely confident.

Pierce Brianna. No idea why, not someone I particular know a lot about!