Girls’ Confidence Gap

Katty Kay and Claire Shipman’s first book, The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance – What Women Should Know, helped adult women build confidence. With the success of that book, they started getting questions about how to increase girls’ confidence as well. When they looked into the issue, the authors identified a “confidence gap” between girls and boys. (1)

Kay and Shipman worked with Ypulse, a polling firm that focuses on teens and tweens, to gather information for their book, The Confidence Code for Girls. They surveyed more than 1,300 girls between 8 and 14 years old as well as their parents. And what they learned was shocking. (1)

During the first part of childhood, there is no difference between the confidence levels of boys and girls. But girls’ confidence falls by 30% between the ages of 8 and 14. By the time kids are 14 years old, boys’ confidence level is 27% higher than girls’. (1)

4 Ways to Boost Girls’ Confidence

While those numbers are alarming, parents and other adults in girls’ lives can encourage their confidence. Here are four ways to keep girls’ confidence strong.

1. Don’t mistake success for confidence.

At puberty, the differences between male and female brains starts to take shape. Women have a more active prefrontal cortex, making them skillful at big-picture thinking and strategizing. Women’s ability to more easily access both sides of the brain allows for strong multi-tasking. These traits, along with the way women are socialized toward a “good girl” stereotype, help girls be successful in school and extracurricular activities. (2)

But be careful not to mistake success for confidence. Although a girl might excel academically, she can still lack confidence. Keep an eye out for people-pleasing, perfectionism, overthinking, and an unwillingness to take risks. All are signs of low confidence. (1)

2. Encourage girls to take risks.

The strategizing that comes from a more active prefrontal cortex also means that girls have an increased ability to identify and avoid risks. And while this characteristic will keep her from getting in trouble at school, taking risks is a valued trait in the real world. At the same time, boys’ testosterone increases, bolstering their knack for risk-taking. (2)

Encourage your daughter to take risks by getting out of her comfort zone. Risk-taking will look different for each girl. But generally, you can encourage her to try something she’s not already good at. That might mean trying out for a team, seeking out a new friend, or taking on a bigger responsibilities. (1)

3. Allow her to fail.

Fear of failure is one thing that can keep girls from taking risks, which affects their confidence. When your child experiences failure, don’t try to fix it for her or immediately soothe her. Let her take some space to process the events and then help her learn to move through failure by making a plan of what to do differently next time. This gives her agency to fix things for herself and makes failure less scary because she knows she can rebound from it. (1)

4. Share your own failures.

While you’re teaching your daughter how to move through failure, take the opportunity to be a role model for both risk and failure. Tell her about your greatest failures and how you came back from them. And show her when you’re nervous about a new challenge. Knowing that the most important adults in her life take risks and also fail will make it easier for your daughter to do the same. (1) This helps recontextualize failure into a learning opportunity. You can eventually eliminate failure by seeing every outcome as either successful or something to learn from.

While girls’ confidence decreases between the ages of 8 and 14, taking healthy risks and bouncing back from ‘failure’ will give them a confidence boost. Both you and your daughter will likely be amazed at all she can accomplish.