My wife and I have been together for 9 years, we have a kid. We both work full time, and she is reaching the terminal stage of her PhD. She is a paid student, transitioning to full time work in her field. If I said that 95% of the people in her field of engineering are men, that would be a pretty generous statement, as I don’t think I’ve ever met another women that works in her area. It doesn’t look like that will be changing anytime soon.
I am a PhD scientist, while in a completely different field, I understand that success is often not completely limited to skill, and the ability to be confident, gregarious, and outgoing is a major ‘X factor’ for success in our highly technical fields. At our level, everyone is talented and knowledgeable. The most successful have skill, but are confident and outgoing.
She wants to be more confident and assertive, so this is not me pushing something onto her. I should also say that she doesn’t suffer from social anxiety or anything remotely similar to that. Additionally, she doesn’t feel limited by her gender specifically, if that makes sense. She sort of has the default brain of a guy that works in her area (buzzcut hair, likes video games, dresses in T-shirts and cargo pants, not interested in stereotypical “feminine” things – not that there is anything wrong with being feminine, just providing a backdrop). We often joke that I married a gay man in a women’s body.
I should state that I am tangentially familiar with her area of work, and I know that she is operating at a much higher level of skill than most of the guys around her.
Her professional confidence is related to her gender, to some degree. She has stated that she worries people see her existence in the field as a “token” women, likely because someone actually said that to her a while ago, implying that if she wasn’t a women, she wouldn’t be in her program. Additionally, while she is an American citizen now, she came from a country that absolutely views and treats women as second class citizens. She was told constantly growing up that she can’t or shouldn’t do certain things, because women “can’t do that”, and that she really just needs to think about her ability to make sure her future husband “would be satisfied and happy”. Again culturally, and based on past experience with men from her culture was basically told that her job is to serve men. Barf.
I don’t subscribe to any of that non-sense. My wife is my partner and best friend. We share all house-hold duties 50/50. I do all the cooking, and help with cleaning. Child care – hate that term – we are both spending equal time raising our child. I respect her viewpoints when we agree and disagree, not as an act of charity, but because they are right or wrong.
The only place where this dynamic doesn’t extend is in the bedroom, and without making this a NSFW post, I’ll just say that she enjoys me being dominant. That’s fine with me, though it does put me out of my comfort zone to some degree, because growing up, women here in the US were a lot more “empowered” so to say, about asserting their desires. An example would again be cultural, where women are expected to perform oral on demand, but oral for women is considered preposterous.
How all of this negatively affects her, is that she doesn’t feel confident to “shoot the shit” with guys at work, and she also feels socially excluded sometimes. She notices that conversations change when she is around. I can’t count how many times she’s said she’s been in a meeting, proposes an idea, has it shot down, to only have the same idea come up soon after from a male coworker, and then it’s the cats pajamas.
And I should also say, that she is very outgoing, friendly and sociable with women.
She wants to be more outgoing and assertive, but direct desire doesn’t always translate to ability to do something. It’d be one thing if she was fine being totally introverted. There are many introverted men in my field and in her field, and they don’t go as far. But, she wants to be more assertive, and socially outgoing. I know many women who are very assertive and outgoing, including my own mother, and they are treated differently by male and female colleagues.
Does anyone have any advice that might help? Is there anything I can do to help her with this? I don’t know what to do, because I am a naturally very outgoing person, and like I’ve mentioned above, the only place where the dynamic of equal “power” doesn’t extend is the bedroom. If I started blowing my wife everyday, would that even change how she feels towards men, lol? Seriously, I don’t want to negatively contribute to her own internal stereotypes. I do coach her as best as I can on tips for being more outgoing with guys, but what are some other things we can try? Anyone else able to successfully increase their “charisma points”?
Any and all advice would be appreciated.
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TL;DR version My wife works in male dominated industry, and wishes she was more confident in professional settings. What are some ways I can help her achieve that, or ideas that she could utilize to meet her goal of becoming more assertive?
1 comment
I feel like cognitive behavioral therapy might aid her in questioning her views on how a woman should be. Beyond that, some of this sounds like she is being assertive and just dealing with sexism. If she brings things up, has them shot down, and then accepted when a man brings it up, that is her being assertive and dealing with a sexist. You can’t fix that some of the people she works with are sexists. But if she wants to be more assertive. you two can talk about interactions she had, and you can ask her, if you were comfortable being more assertive, how do you think you would have handled that instead? Then listen. Then ask her, what do you think would have happened had you done that?
An approach of questioning her and making her think about it is good, as you won’t make somebody more assertive by you telling them what to do. It’s hard to push somebody into being able to resist being pushed around. So, you need a very gentle approach to encourage more independence and assertiveness. And, as always, people don’t always change. And rarely change quickly. But if she’s comfortable with it, and you are comfortable with it, it’s worth a try.