Reading 02: The Curse of Woman
This summer I lived with two other girls who I had never met before this summer. I have always been hyperaware of how others view me, but this experience made it more apparent to me. Especially in the first couple weeks, I was very careful and tried to be the “perfect roommate,” apologizing if I didn’t do my dishes and ensuring to make my bed each morning (things that are totally not like me and things I would never do living with friends or family). One day I was driving home with both roommates in the car and I had to aggressively brake at a yellow light, causing one of my roommate’s bag to fly off the console. I yelled “Sorry!” as my roommate in the passenger seat also said “Sorry, should have moved my bag!” My other roommate started laughing and sarcastically said “I think we all just need to apologize more. It’s the curse of woman to say sorry unnecessarily.”
I knew that I said sorry a lot, but I never knew that this was a real phenomena that people discussed: “The curse of woman.” When we got home, I googled it and found this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/opinion/when-an-apology-is-anything-but.html
along with a few others, detailing exactly how I felt whenever I said sorry. Like I needed to make others aware of what I did, even if it wasn’t at all my fault. This has been something I have done my entire life, but never really understood as a problem.
Now I am more aware of this issue, and recognize when I’m doing something slightly unreasonable in an attempt to please others. In fact, just yesterday I had to send a very assertive email to the company that I interned at this past summer. I had an exploding offer, meaning that the deadline did not follow Notre Dame’s policy, and as a company that recruited at the career fair they were expected to follow such policies. I was very nervous at the thought of the HR contact being offended at my assertiveness, until I stepped back for a second and realized how silly that was. Although it’s a different situation, that apprehension to ask for something that you want and deserve is described in the pieces about negotiating offers. Definitely after reading those articles, I am more likely to barter with a company to get what I want and/or deserve in a job search process. I especially liked the comment about how in such a situation, you are only interacting with an individual, who probably cares a lot less than you about this negotiation. It’s easy to think that the company would never accommodate such a request and you will look like a greedy, self-entitled 21 year old for requesting such a thing. But in reality, only the single contact in HR will ever know that the negotiation occurred and the odds that they will be at all offended are extremely low.
I am realizing that this “curse of woman” is more far reaching than excessive apologizing. In a lot of ways, our hesitation to any action that may offend anyone can prove to be quite harmful. I am working to get over this curse, and although it’s a gradual process, I know I will thank myself later.
I ask that my comments about my current job situation not be shared with the class, but please feel free to share my comments on gender norms/women saying sorry/women being less likely to negotiate.
