Catherine Tinsley comments on challenging the confidence culture in CNN Money feature

Posted in News  |  Tagged News - Gender Gap

Julia Carpenter’s CNN Money feature “Why corporatizing feminist messages doesn’t really help women” featured Senior Policy Scholar Catherine Tinsley’s research:

Challenging confidence culture: “Research shows there’s no huge difference in confidence levels between men and women,” says Cathy Tinsley, senior policy scholar at Georgetown University. Yet “empowertising” is designed to lead women to believe otherwise. The more we discuss how much help women need, Tinsley says, the more workplaces perpetuate a system that keeps women feeling isolated and inferior to their male counterparts. Tinsley’s research shows that the repetition of these messages can even widen the perceived differences between men and women, actually decreasing women’s opportunities for empowerment. “The more that we talk about how genders are different and that women need some kind of special products or special help, the more we are actually going to forward the gender differences narrative,” she says.

Read more (new window) on CNN.com.