Successful women use fear not to undermine their success, but to apologize for it.
Fear is offered to others as a compensation for achieved success.
Fear domesticates powerful women. A woman who is extremely competent in most areas of her life but supremely afraid of one is “humanized” by her anxiety; those around her realize she’s not perfect. They can then breathe a sigh of relief and allow her into the community without burdening her with their resentment or their envy.
“Boy, Susan has the perfect life,” someone might comment, only to be told “But do you know she has this thing about not drinking anything except bottled water? She can’t even have a cup of coffee in the office. She’s afraid of getting sick.”
They can then click their tongues in sympathy and Susan is allowed to be triumphant in other ways. She’s not the star. She’s safe. It’s OK.
The numbers of successful, competent women who have problems with unresolved and irrational fears are legion. My best bet, however, is that this is simply not true with men.
There are studies showing that men who describe themselves as fearful are, unlike their female counterparts, not successful and competent. Even extremely fearful women, in contrast, do not necessarily allow fear to interrupt their public lives. Such women do well in business or a profession and give the impression of competence and self-sufficiency. They do, in fact, function very well in these areas, often reaching top positions.
It is only within their most intimate relationships—or, in some cases, totally on their own—that they express their intense fears and needs. Their personal lives are often at odds with their public personae; instead of regarding themselves as others do, as self-sufficient and courageous, they think of their inner selves as so extremely fearful that they worry about displaying any aspect of that “true” self—the fearful self.
According to a number of studies, women who identify themselves as “able yet fearful” have, statistically, more unhappy love affairs or marriages than their less fearful counterparts, but they do not necessarily do less well in the workplace.
And what do we make of that?
4 Responses to Women’s Fears and Women’s Success
milesmann - May 4, 2010 at 8:55 pm
You’re wrong about men. We are just as fearful, all of us. Everyone is supremely afraid of even just one thing, and though I don’t think this is something that can be scientifically or statistically or even astrologically proven (because what are any of these studies but individuals either volunteering their fears or denying them?), it is an instinctual belief I am willing to go to bat for. Why else would we be at the top of the food chain? Intelligence? Only fear puts that intelligence to good use, otherwise those Volkswagon-sized sabretooths would have taken us out of the race long ago (that’s two sports metaphors so far, for those counting).The difference here, which you’ve touched upon, is a difference of identity. The successful-whatever who drives the $300,000 car and can describe to you Heidi Klum’s bedroom is not successful because he fears nothing. He probably fears Heidi Klum isn’t having as much fun as he is. It’s just that his identity as a successful man is totally exclusive of copping to fear. It’s out of the question. Don’t go there.The unsuccessful men who describe themselves in studies as fearful are not unsuccessful because of their fears; they are unsuccessful because they are the types of guys who describe themselves as “fearful” to strangers holding clipboards. Imagine these guys interviewing for jobs. Heidi Klum doesn’t do fearful.I wonder, though, if fear, or rather the copping to it, is a form of narcissism in successful women. Don’t attack me here on this one, either. This isn’t a polemic. This is just a thought. We’re just speaking about it, as one of the secretly terrified males in Glengarry Glen Ross says. If fear is, I suppose, allowable, in one successful gender but not in the other, would it be that strange for this particular gender to run with it, to forge it into their identity? I mean, if we’re talking unhappy love affairs and failed marriages, narcissism is not exactly the bond that fixes these things. (Remember, we’re just speaking about it.)And ladies, if you can get away with admitting to your fears and remaining successful, god bless you. We’d all tell you how terrified we are (of Heidi Klum) if we knew it wouldn’t kill our credibility.
lee77 - May 5, 2010 at 9:44 am
The study referenced at the ‘studies’ link above appears to be based on 96 secretaries. From 1984. – not quite the study of successful women I was expecting to read about.
thechangeling - May 5, 2010 at 10:39 pm
Is this a joke?
macheath - May 6, 2010 at 9:42 pm
Wel, Gina certainly has no fear or anxiety about saying whatever comes into her head. Or, as already pointed out, having her opinions supported by a lone citation from 1984 of a study of 95 female secretaries. I guess this is better than most of Gina’s blogs, where no data or links whatsoever are provided, but maybe not. I trust that when she teaches, she has a bit more substance underpinning whatever she tells her students.