Oh to have the confidence of an average male

[Errors]

This is one of my favourite sayings now. Did I get it right? I think I read it for the first time on here.

Anyway, what is it about getting slightly older (40s) and all of a sudden SEEING this everywhere?

I went on a date the other day with a guy who still
lives at home with his Dad and siblings (he is my age) which normally wouldn’t be off putting in of itself (it was circumstantial) but he was so unbelievably full of himself. Kept talking about women in the office throwing themselves at him, text me after to say I was too ‘cold’ and not flirty enough and so he decided to ‘match my vibe’ and almost made out like I was really missing out on someone great by not wanting to see him again.

Tell me some of your hilarious stories about men acting this way please.
Why the hell do most decidedly average (and below average) men think they’re god’s gift?

I don't think women need to become more like men. I think men need to become more like women. We need to value things like teamwork and humility, as well as caring responsibilities.

Lean in isn't the answer, even Sheryl Sandberg agrees these days.

I once interviewed someone's forehead because they didn't know how to adjust their camera on Zoom. Did point it out to them a couple of times, they didn't seem to care.

Role was for tech support.

After we rejected him he demanded to know why he hadn't got the job. I spent ages writing a long, constructive email with about 7 or 8 different points. He replied back asking why he hadn't got the job, in a way that showcased his amazement that he hadn't got a job he considered so far beneath him.

Ambition has nothing to do with inherent bias.

Approximately half of all vets in the UK are female. If lack of ambition amongst women is the problem, why did the following controlled study, conducted in 2020, show that an identical candidate scored higher for competency and would be awarded a better rate of pay, when the only difference was their male name?

Notably, the difference was driven largely by the cohort of participants who believed that women no longer faced bias in the workplace because of their sex.

Summary here:
https://news-archive.exeter.ac.uk/2020/june/title_802676_en.html

Study here:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aba7814

I was discussing confidence, which directly relates to ambition. I never said anything about the gender pay gap.

@Demodog the common scenario you describe always makes me think of this sketch.

This morning, I was in a meeting presenting an issue and happened to mention Eva Lovelace (considered the mother of modern computing) and computer programming.

A very mediocre white man (who is on a PIP but still thinks and talks to anyone junior to him like he is the office GOD) interrupted me to say I was wrong and, 'No, that's Helga, somebody. She invented Wi-Fi and was an actress.' I explained he was thinking of Hedy Lamarr, but he doubled down that it was Hedy Lamarr who invented computer programming.

Everyone just sagely nodded, whereas if a woman had incorrectly interjected in the middle of a male senior team presentation, I bet heads would have rolled.

I was livid got my phone out then and there 'to check his comments' (I knew my facts but I wanted to make a point) and hammered him into the ground with detail. I then asked him to come to me after a meeting with information he had fully researched and confirmed correct and I would issue a revision to the presentation, if necessary.

What annoyed me I could see 'oooh harsh on the poor lad' faces while I was making my point - from the men who would have not batted an eyelid if one of the women had to be 'put in her place'

Sorry, this just happened so I am still very irritated.

One of the best and most accurate posts I’ve ever read on MN and I’ve been on here 15 years.

Completely aligns with my experiences coming up in male dominated sectors. Even now as a Director I occasionally experience the unnecessary challenging from far junior men.

I’ve known countless men that act confident but when I’ve got to know them the insecurities come out. One told me he had zero confidence but you wouldn’t know until you know them properly.

I can imagine why you’re irritated but IMO you should feel bloody proud. You handled that beautifully

I remember seeing a 'Punch' cartoon of an office meeting, where the caption was "That's a wonderful idea, Miss Pruitt, perhaps one of the men here would like to have it."

Which has said it all for most of my working life.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat I'm going to passive aggressively get that made into a sticker for my notebook, that perfectly sums up my current workplace.

I actually cut that cartoon out and had it stuck up on my office door back in the day...

This one?
https://x.com/PunchBooks/status/1103946652216446976

If you think this is about ambition then you've spectacularly missed the points being made.

It's probably the one good thing about working in the probation service. Majority of staff are female. But the men that are there are a combination of 'what can I get away with/ don't appear to give a shit about the big decisions'. So whilst female staff will ponder if it's right to send someone back to prison and the impact on others, male staff will be more 'they messed up, back to prison you go' and don't give it a second thought .

@Michelle12A I wasn't sharing that specific to the gender pay gap.

It seems simplistic to imply that men aren't to blame for having "ambition" (and that women therefore just need to try harder). Is it really surprising that other women see this inherent bias and are put off from applying because they know the deck is stacked against them?

Those female vets were 'confident' in applying for a competitive degree and graduating, yet the study I shared shows the inherent bias in the system.

Here's another study, conducted in 2022 on the characteristics of a leader. There's several interesting findings, but for the purposes of this discussion I'll highlight the following. Agentic in this context is the characteristics you would expect from a leader - decisive, assertive, and so on.

Notably, the gender of the research participant affected character ratings such that male respondents viewed a female leader who exhibited agentic behaviors in a professionally challenging situation less positively than a male leader who displayed the same agentic behaviors.

Our results also show that a female leader who displayed agentic-oriented character-related behavior was the victim of a backlash for such behaviors, but primarily from male evaluators. This result is consistent with research that shows that male observers tend to respond more harshly to women using agentic styles of communication

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9789373/

That's the one!!!! Wonderful to see it again (and sorry if my memory changed the wording slightly).

Yes this

Mind you, I spend a bit of time on Instagram in the last year have observed quite a few women overstating their experience. Some of these women I know (and have worked with). One I saw the other day I worked with six years ago and she had little to no experience yet the other day she was stating she'd worked in industry for 12+ years.

It's actually really opened my eyes a lot. Never again will I undersell myself.

Since Brexit, when so many European vets left the UK and went home, our friend who runs a veterinary practice with c30 vets has taken on more female vets to replace the missing Euro males. He's received a rising number of complaints from customers that seems to correlate with the sex of the vet. When a male vet is called out to assist in a difficult calving, and the calf or the cow dies despite everything possible being done to prevent it, the farmer usually accepts that this was just bad luck and trusts that the vet was competent and did what he could.

When a female vet attends a very similar call-out, and treats the animal in the same way, and has the same sad outcome, the farmer complains to the vet practice, asks for compensation and demands a male vet next time.

It got so bad at one point, and he was so concerned about the situation, that he asked a friend of his, an older female vet who is a vet school professor and an internationally known expert in bovine medicine, to participate in an informal assessment. She went out on call with each of the female vets (who didn't know who she was) and observed them at work. She found little to criticise, but she did note that many of the farmers treated fully qualified female vets as if they were trainees and didn't seem to trust them — and that included several female farmers. It was an informal experiment so only anecdata, but shocking. Good to see there's formal research happening too.

@FrozenLimeMargarita I just wanted to say that I am mad on your behalf. This could have happened to me. It actually does with one man, who makes changes to my work and the changes he makes are wrong. Wrong work has gone to clients like that!

Do not doubt yourself for one minute. These incidents make me feel so isolated, because nobody dares to speak up and stand up to him. I stand up to him all the time, so now I am just the crazy woman.

You handled this brilliantly. It may not benefit you directly and not now, but what you have done is good for all woman.

@FrozenLimeMargarita don't know if in your anger you mistyped, but it is Ada not Eva

Yes, have thought this for a long time. I've been on women's development events at work and the messages were always about how women need to emulate male behaviour in the workplace. I wonder not for long as I can guess the answer how many a) men's development events exist and b) if they tell men to emulate women's behaviour in the workplace.

Love this!

Thank you 😊 it's amazing how bloody true it is 😂

@21ZIGGY

Law?
I recognise your description which matches my professional experience

Not law but another one of those auxiliary industries which props up the financial services sector. It's much the same in a lot of these industries. It is changing, in that that blustery Fat Cat City persona is not the only archetype allowed these days.

There is a wider variety of flavours of self-important man now, including Progressive Cyclist Man, Working Class Lad Done Bloody Well, IT Boffin Man and Heads Down Sensible Numbers Guy and other tribes. But they all thrive on being loudly pleased with themselves.

Women can be arrogant shits in the workplace too, of course, but there is a much narrower set of archetypes available to them.