Invisible Chains: Women and Self-Criticism
Gender roles perspective
The leadership training for women in large consulting firms openly acknowledges that women tend to be self-critical when faced with unfamiliar tasks.
In most tasks, however, the feedback way is the quicker way to desired results.
Well, is it just in career aspects, or women are self-critics otherwise as well?
Tapping into history, in the era of hunters and gatherers — males shouldered as hunters while females embraced the responsibilities of gatherers.
This role delegation wasn’t random at all, women were in control over reproductive, economic, and political resources due to anatomy that implied that stability in location was a factor of ease; hence social and ecological environments dictated the roles as per ease of survival.
Falling into the habit loop: cue, routine, reward — these gender roles understandably became a norm. With great routines, comes the power of assumptions and exploitations. Soon gender roles defined gender characteristics and hence shaped our minds around it due to correspondent inference.
These overgeneralized characteristics now identified and justified fantasizing male-male competition for acquiring mates, leading to males’ propensity for aggression and risk-taking, while females’ selection of protective and high-investment males might allow them to be reliably dependent and risk-avoidant.
To conclude out loud, the curtailment of female autonomy and mobility poses additional obstacles to women’s participation in production activities require the skills and expertise just enough to increase the extrinsic risks (defined as vulnerability to harshness and unpredictability) on female roles and hence be economically dependent on males too.
Males were away from the home and in environments where feedback for their tasks was very evident and externalized while females in homes internalized feedback from the collection of social cues to conclude by being a self-critic. (say a female cooked and got the feedback that it was too spicy — chances of concluding that the meal wasn’t great was her natural conclusion).
Now, in the 21st century, we aren’t the hunters and gatherers; the current socio-economic environment promotes both genders to embrace roles as per their choice. But only certain roles, such as production, are limited by the female anatomy.
So, females now wear multiple hats — most working women are also homemakers and childcare-takers. In the hustle of life, we rarely recognize the pressure this imposes on females as now more than ever females practice being self-critic for multiple responsibilities.
How we are conceived in the physical as well as the digital society, say a comment on the meal prepared or the child raised, or the house well-kept or the way she carries herself is all inserted into the huge, internalized feedback loop of self and hence defines and promotes self-critic attitude.
With the ‘XX’ chromosome, women get the self-criticizing characteristic that makes them stay in this survival phase and hence always alert to not go wrong at all. Survival phase is basically the body and brain assessing a crisis and thinking of a way out. Well, studies say this survival phase of a person has a perk of building high EQ, at the cost of what though?
What is the needed aid now?
We are mindful about something around us only when we are conscious of spotting it. So, when someone says the room has a lot of yellow — our mind tends to observe more of that. Let’s define that yellow and look for the yellow around us. If that yellow is help in any matter, seek the help. While males can promote this fairness of seeking help, women can breathe and voice out the small voice to seek help.
Naturally, default is defined by familiarity around a human so small changes in perspectives can be the initiation of the much-needed butterfly effect by those who witness you. While I accept my promotion and complete my needed trainings, you may pass on the word that partner roles are a customized version of gender roles and it’s about time to accept it.
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Reference: Technical paper — ‘Evolved but Not Fixed: A Life History Account of Gender Roles and Gender Inequality’
PMCID: PMC6664064
Published by Frontiers in Psychology — 2019 Jul 23
