I recently attended a writing workshop. The room was filled with highly educated and accomplished participants. The overwhelming majority were women. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that the small fraction of men represented more than a small fraction of the comments and questions. Beyond the frequency with which the men raised their hands and spoke, I noticed something else that was happening.
When some of the women introduced themselves, they introduced their credibility and achievements by saying, “I run a women’s clinic,” or “I’ve worked in youth advocacy for over 15 years.” However, there was a man who introduced his credibility by saying, “I’m an expert in early childhood education.” I was struck by how definitive and powerful his words were. He literally established himself as an expert in the room. While I know there were many experts in the room who were women, they didn’t announce it so explicitly and confidently.
For me, learning to own the statement, “I lead several programs at a non-profit,” took months of practicing. I thought that it made me sound like a show off. Instead, I would say, “I work for a non-profit in several programs.” This is not exactly the most impressive sounding sentence. Now, there is something to be said for maintaining your humility when you grow into positions of power. However, honestly representing your role does not mean you are not being humble.
I left the workshop wondering when I would feel confident enough to introduce myself as an expert in my field. I thought, well, I suppose I should have a few extra letters after my name, a few books published, speaking engagements booked for the next 2 years, and oh, I should be at least 50 years old. Now, I don’t know if the man who introduced himself as an expert has many letters, books and speaking engagements, and I doubt he was 50 yet. Let me be clear, I’m not doubting his expertise. I’m just wondering why so many women who have such expertise and more, minimize it? I don’t think I’m alone in assuming that I must be years, tuition, books, and talks away from being an expert? And the catch 22 is that unless I’m already an expert, how do I get the book deals and the speaking engagements booked?
Instead of thinking that one day we’ll wake up and realize that the total of our education and achievements makes us experts, I’m proposing we think of expertise and try on being experts in new ways. What if our ability to identify ourselves as experts, rests less in some arbitrary list of accomplishments, and more in our experiences—in the years we’ve dedicated ourselves to a single subject area, in the frequency with which others seek our opinion, or in the breakthrough we make in research that forever changes a field of work?
What do you think? Tell us in the comments below.