I can confidently walk into a room full of strangers, make small talk, talk up someone else’s ideas, introduce people to a crowd. I can stand in front of a room of freshman engineers and get them laughing with me as I sell them on clear communication (trust me, this isn’t for the faint of heart). I can convince others to try some product, system, book, whatever, based on my comments.

I cannot sell myself.

Not that the material (me) is substandard – obviously it isn’t if you’re swayed by all the other things I can sell. But asking you to consider my research, read my work, buy my book? There I fail. It’s all mental and elemental. It’s a weird combination of imposter syndrome, conditioning, others’ expectations, fear of failure and maybe just a little bit of Midwest humble.

And it’s not unusual, especially for women.

It’s not me. It’s you.

Photo: Meg Turville-Heitz   I drove alone for hours in the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park, Tasmania, Australia  

Studies suggest it isn’t about confidence as much as feeling at ease in promoting oneself. “If women are more averse to engaging in self-promotion, perhaps because of societal pressures or expectations, a gender gap in self-promotion may follow even when it is against their financial interests,“ Christine L Exley, a study author and professor at Harvard Business School, told The Harvard Gazette.

I remember my dad’s kitchen-table conversations with my mother as she made dinner. Accomplishments belonged to him. Setbacks belonged to someone else. Yet, when I eagerly showed him the A’s on my report card, I was told I was being immodest and an A wasn’t good enough, come back when they were all A pluses.

My brother was advised to assert himself, confidently state his interpretations, be competitive. I was told to not be such a know-it-all, advised to be humble, lower my voice (which I pretty much failed at), be less strident (same), and recognize that others probably know much more than I do about just about everything. My brother was taught to externalize problems. I was taught they were my own fault.

Practice makes perfect

It’s conditioning. Too often, women have to be better to just break even because for men the system failed them, but we fail ourselves.

A 2022 MIT study found women “receive substantially lower potential ratings despite receiving higher job performance ratings” and that difference “account[s] for approximately half of the gender promotion gap.” According to the study, there is an assumption that if men are passed over for promotion they will move on to a different job, but women will remain. It becomes a bit of a vicious circle of rewarding men for a perception of less loyalty.

Ada Deer, Menominee from Keshena, Wisconsin, scholar, civil servant, activist, and advocate for Native American issues and social worker

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, first Jewish woman, and only the second woman to serve on the US Supreme Court who advocated for gender equality and women’s rights.

Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani activist for female education and youngest Nobel laureate, at age 17 for her human rights advocacy.

I know it wasn’t that my dad was so much more confident in his abilities; but he had been taught how to sell himself. Studies suggest we set different professional expectations for women and men. Careerchange.com writer Julie Norwell writes,

“[W]omen experience harsh judgement for departing from traditional female traits like collaboration and nurturing. Women exhibiting assertiveness, ambition, and competition – stereotypical leadership characteristics – are seen as bossy, abrasive – even unlikeable. Men exhibiting similar behaviors, by contrast, are seen as confident, competent, and promotable because these traits are also traditionally male.”

All of us constantly face gendered assumptions about our capabilities, affinities, reactions, and interests. For Gen X women and older, these assumptions were often inhibiting.

I remember having trouble understanding the point of algebra. So, a + b = c. Why would I add letters? “Variables” meant nothing without context. I was told just to memorize the formula and do the equation. That’s not how my brain works. When I just didn’t get it, my male algebra teacher told me not to worry about it, I’d never need it in my career, and spent 15 minutes explaining it to a boy with the same questions (I hope teen girls today aren’t treated as dismissively). I assumed I couldn’t do math, ever (other than geometry; geometry made sense), and it changed the trajectory I might have taken in college, really changed my life because I didn’t have the math background for many STEM classes. It wasn’t until a grad school statistics class many years later that I finally saw a purpose for those variables. But that one assumption about my future by that one male teacher created a roadblock. Maybe I let it because I didn’t see a purpose. But I’d been conditioned to accept those assumptions.

Laurel Clark, American astronaut from Racine, Wisconsin, awarded a posthumous Congressional Space Medal of Honor after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

Christa McAuliffe, New Hampshire school teacher and astronaut who died on the Space Shuttle Challenger.

Creola Katherine Coleman Johnson, Mathematician and human computer whose calculations while working for NASA were critical to the success of crewed spaceflight.

It’s all in our heads

I find myself completely flummoxed by my own inability to overcome some of these things, even as I look them in the face and recognize my shortcomings. Imposter syndrome kept me from working harder to publish my research (even though it’s damned good work, really!). I’ve always lacked confidence, but usually just plow ahead, red-faced and certain of failure and thus often consider successes to be almost  “accidental.” I mean, can you really take credit for something that “just happened”?

While some of these feelings I can attribute to being picked on, and apart, and judged to never quite meet anyone’s expectations of who I should be throughout my childhood – girls weren’t supposed to be hyperactive, loud and “unladylike” – some of it may just be part of that mindset of the nervous creative that constantly assesses stimuli and tries to piece together the connective social fabric of our lived experience. Some of it might be a bit of that fight or flight self-preservation in avoiding a spotlight that shines too brightly in our direction.

There’s that underlying fear that takes you back to the schoolyard where someone will mock your words, your story, the world you built. The thing about writing is it’s a pouring out of something that is so much deeper than words, so much more intense. Stories emerge from the soul, from some unexplainable creative place in our brains that connects experiences that are often completely ours, personal, but that a writer shares with the world. (For more discussion on this, see this post.)

Zitkala-Ša (Red Bird), Dakota writer, musician, activist in the pan-Indian movement for Native American suffrage and women’s rights. Buried as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin with her husband in Arlington National Cemetery.

Ida B Wells, investigative journalist, sociologist, educator and civil rights and women’s suffrage activist born into slavery in Mississippi. Posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her writing on lynching.

Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Jane Cochran), American journalist who pioneered in the field of investigative journalism, risking her life to expose systems of power.

Then there’s that whole concept of imposition, a bit of that Midwest humble. I don’t want to be that telemarketer intruding on your weekend or filling your email box with spam. I want you to want to come see my work with a gentle nudge, not hammering you daily in socials to let you know hey, I published a book, you might like it … (or, if not, please just don’t say anything). And honestly, if you like it, I’ll love that you said so but I will be so surprised I’ll be left unsure how to respond. Seriously.

So, please check out Black River and the forthcoming Specters from a Dream.

Really, this wasn’t all just to set up a shameless plug. It’s also Women’s History Month, and this is as good a time as any to talk about not only those women who did all those unladylike things and were “accidentally” successful, but also how there’s a little of that in many of us.

Recognizing that the accomplishments of women are all around us, but often under-recognized is a thing. And so is the current effort to erase women from military history (here’s an example of a removed page),  government such as NASA and Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) of World War II, and even in death in the name of anti-“DEI.” DEI labels (in a few high-profile cases, the pages have been restored) have been added to many website URLS and no longer go to profiles of everyone from Civil War nurses to women who lost their lives fighting forest fires. (Note, while profiles of women still exist in Arlington National Cemetery’s catalogue under “notable figures” they are no longer highlighted under their respective sections such as “Women’s History.”)

So, I’m putting myself out there. It’s too easy to disappear, otherwise, in the mayhem of these times.

(Oh, and please pick up my books! … baby steps)

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Photo: Meg Turville-Heitz   This one stands alone. But it’s just one of many.  Great Ocean Road – Twelve apostles Marine National Park, Victoria, Australia