Women’s self-confidence problems can get very complicated. Much of it is due to the social confusion surrounding gender roles. Men who are caring and loving and successful are still allowed to be masculine, whereas many women feel the need to avoid femininity in order to be taken seriously.

At the same time they are still seen as the caretakers in our communities, and usually in our lives. Mothers stay home when the children are sick. It’s not uncommon for women to work a full-time job alongside their partners and come home to face the brunt of the cooking and housework.

Because of these reasons, many women are perfectionists and overachievers, unable to face failure but hemmed in by the failure of not being involved. This leaves little room for the positive acceptance of what one does well, and the realistic expectations of what needs improving.

This also leads to a bigger problem among women where they first degrade themselves internally, then cut down their peers in an attempt to level the playing field. Female friendship dynamics can be truly terrifying. In Japan, for instance, one woman become obsessed with the success of her friend’s daughter to the point of killing the child to prove the other parents weren’t doing enough to protect her. That’s an extreme case, but women kill each other in all kinds of subtler ways.

How Criticism Hurts Self-Confidence

This seems like a no-brainer. When someone degrades your ability to do things, including how well you present yourself, you don’t feel positive about your abilities. You don’t grow self-confident in those environments, though you may feel the push to succeed to prove someone else wrong. Outward confidence means very little in terms of how you feel about yourself.

What surprises most people is the effect their criticism of others affects their own self-confidence. The high of feeling better than one person is quickly followed by the doubt of how you compare against someone else. There will always be someone more beautiful, talented, or “giving”. To be truly self-confident, and able to enjoy your life, you must be willing to accept your abilities on their own, without stacking them up to someone else’s.

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