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Infertility In The Workplace: Women Are Still Suffering In Silence

5/7/2020

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By Dr. Pragya Agarwal| March 8, 2020
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Photo: Getty

"Fertility treatment is on the increase in the U.K., approaching 68,000 treatment cycles carried out every year and approximately 1 in 6 couples (3.5 million people) affected. One in 8 women of reproductive age may face problems when trying to conceive a child, which makes infertility more common than Type 2 diabetes. In 2015, 73,000 babies were born using assisted reproductive technologies, a number that has doubled in the last decade. But, it is still being treated as a niche issue.
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Michelle Obama, upon the release of her memoir in late 2018, revealed that she and her husband Barack Obama had used IVF to conceive their daughters and opened up the public discourse around infertility. However, there are no clear workplace policy guidelines on the kind of support that individuals undergoing fertility treatments should expect to receive. Paid paternity and maternity leave has been a subject of discussion and debate in recent years, therefore aiming to make workplaces more inclusive for parents, and women in general. But, fertility treatments have been largely seen as a private matter, and not the subject of robust policy discussions.
​

In most cases, infertility is surrounded by silence and stigma and women, in particular, are reluctant to share this in the workplace, for fear of being stereotyped. In general, women already face a number of barriers and biases in the workplace. Mothers specifically face a motherhood penalty even before they have a child. In a study published in the American Psychological Association, Eden King shows that discrimination starts the moment a woman announces that she is pregnant. Women encountered more subtle discrimination in the form of rudeness, hostility, decreased eye contact and attempts to cut off the interaction when they appeared to be pregnant (wearing a pregnancy prosthesis) while applying for jobs in retail stores than when the same women did not appear to be pregnant. Implicit unconscious biases and stereotypes are at play here, as women are being penalized for acting out of their feminine stereotype. The study shows that these acts of subtle sexism and microaggressions starting when a woman announces their pregnancy puts her firmly on the "mommy track" and can have a huge impact on her decision to leave the workforce. Women who become mothers also earn less than their childless peers."
Read More About Infertility In The Workplace
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The Confidence Gap

10/23/2018

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​By: Katty Kay and Claire Shipman

“Evidence shows that women are less self-assured than men-and that to succeed, confidence matters as much as competence. Here’s why and what to do about it.”

Confidence in Women
Although women have worked hard and have made great strides including the following:
  1. Women now earn more college degrees than men
  2. Women make up half of the workforce
  3. Women are closing the gap in middle management
  4. Companies that employ women large numbers out perform their competitors on every measure of probability
 
**Men still get promoted faster and paid more. Women still struggle to make it to top positions. The number of women in top positions is very small and barely increasing.
 
Women are lacking in confidence, including women who are highly successful in the professional world. There is a vast confidence gap that separates women and men. Compared with men:
 
*Women don’t consider themselves as ready for promotions.
*Women predict they’ll do worse on tests.
*Women end up going into less competitive fields like human resources or marketing.
*Women generally underestimate their abilities.
*Women feel confident only when they are perfect…or practically perfect.
 
"The confidence gap is important because success correlates with confidence just as much as it correlates with competence.  Having talent isn’t merely about being competent; confidence is a part of that talent, you have to have it to excel."
 
“Confidence is the stuff that turns thoughts into action. It is the factor that turns thoughts into judgements about what we are capable of, and that then transforms those judgements into action.” –Richard Petty (Psychology professor at Ohio State University who has spent decades studying confidence.)
 
"Women also suffer from the perfectionism mentality. Women strive to be perfect in all that they do. Women have fixating thoughts on their performance at home, at school, at work, at the gym, and even on vacation. Women have obsessive thoughts about every role in their lives because we want to do them all perfectly, but perfectionism is another confidence killer. Striving to be perfect actually keeps women from getting too much of anything done.  
 
Is this to say that men don’t suffer from thoughts of doubt?
 
No, men do suffer the occasional thought of doubt, but not with such exacting and repetitive zeal, and they don’t let their doubts stop them. Women often times let their doubt or lack of confidence get in the way of trying. Women can do just as well as men when taking tests or performing in top positions, but they choose not to try because they don’t feel confident in their ability to perform. This is what holds women back. Women avoid taking risks because they fear making mistakes and strive to be perfect. When we hesitate because we aren’t sure (low confidence), we hold ourselves back.
 
The good news is that we are capable of performing just as well as men do! The evidence is implicit, to become more confident, women need to stop over thinking and just act! The more that we do this, the more confidence we will build. By shifting our thought patterns and behavior, by keeping at it, channeling our talent for hard work, we can make our brains more confident prone."
 
“What neuroscientists call plasticity, we call hope.”

​

read more about women's confidence struggles and what to do about them
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