When I went to a dinner with friends recently, one of my friends remarked that LinkedIn had notified her that I had been a columnist with Eureka Street for three years. 'Really?' I laughed, 'Time flies when you're frantically writing articles for deadline.' My friend then congratulated me and I immediately replied, 'Oh no, it's nothing.'
The dinner went on, but I thought about the interaction for a while afterwards. Forty-one (now 42) articles over three years isn't nothing, yet my first impulse was to dismiss the achievement, even among my friends.
This phenomenon isn't new; women routinely talk down their achievements. The so-called 'confidence gap', where women don't feel as confident in their own abilities as men, is supposed to be a contributing factor to the gender pay gap. If only women were more assertive, so the thinking goes, then their careers would advance. The world of sport, where a little self-assurance and showboating has never gone astray, provides some case studies on why that reasoning rarely works.
On a float in Manhattan, with one hand holding a bottle of champagne and the other holding the Women's World Cup, American soccer player Megan Rapinoe (pictured) screamed, 'I deserve this!' Within the context of how women's sport has been shunted off as second best for decades, the large pay disparity between male and female athletes, and Rapinoe's own activism, it's clear that her comment (though a bit tongue-in-cheek) was a stance against anyone who told her, and women in general, that they don't deserve recognition for their talent.
Afterwards, however, she faced harsh criticism online and the video of her holding the cup was retweeted by Piers Morgan with the caption 'unbearable'. Morgan has more recently said Rapinoe is an 'arrogant piece of work'.
Compare this to the response to Rafael Nadal's comments on why he got a centre court spot at Wimbledon over the women's world number one Ashleigh Barty. Nadal complimented Barty's game, but also remarked, 'I won 18 grand slams ... In the world of tennis today, honestly, my feeling is today I am little bit more than Ashleigh Barty.' The coverage of the Nadal's comments was pretty mild, saying Nadal had 'reignited debate' and 'had a cheeky serve on Barty'.
I don't think the commentary would have been quite so benign if Serena Williams had made similar comments. And while Barty's humility was praised — she said that all the courts were