{"id":255,"date":"2015-03-06T12:35:11","date_gmt":"2015-03-06T12:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/?p=255"},"modified":"2025-10-22T15:58:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T14:58:31","slug":"255","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/2015\/03\/06\/255\/","title":{"rendered":"Careers advice to empower women..."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2015\/03\/makeithappen.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-256\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2015\/03\/makeithappen-300x100.png\" alt=\"makeithappen\" width=\"300\" height=\"100\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2015\/03\/makeithappen-300x100.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2015\/03\/makeithappen.png 599w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>All around the world, International Women\u2019s Day represents an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of women while calling for greater equality.\u00a0Make It Happen is the 2015 theme for International Women s Day\u00a0encouraging effective action for advancing and recognising women. \u00a0A survey by RSA, the executive search firm, \u00a0found that \u201cwomen bring empathy and intuition to leadership\u201d with nearly two-thirds of respondents (62%) thinking that women contribute differently in the boardroom, compared to their male colleagues. A similar proportion saw women as more empathetic, with a better insight into how decisions play out in the wider organisation and when it came to communications and effective collaboration, \u201cover half felt that women were better\u201d. Studies show us that profitability improves when women take on positions of leadership in companies. So what tools can best help women move ahead?<\/p>\n<p>One powerful tool is <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/2015\/02\/03\/how-do-you-find-a-mentor\/\">mentoring<\/a>.\u00a0A mentor can show you how to ramp up your skill-sets, network effectively and work around or eliminate your weaknesses. They can even open some very important doors to leadership positions. We wrote a popular blog post on <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/2015\/02\/02\/how-can-women-develop-leadership-skills\/\">how women can develop their leadership skills<\/a>\u00a0and discussed this at the Women in Leadership Conference that was organised by the Student Union here at Bath. A common theme emerged which was around lack of confidence holding back women and the unwillingness to take risks. \u00a0The Institution of Leadership &amp; Management's research 'Ambition &amp; Gender at Work' suggests that over 50% of women report feelings of self-doubt about their performance and careers. Time and time again research shows that women are less self-assured than men\u2014and that to succeed, confidence matters as much as competence.<\/p>\n<p>So how can women develop confidence?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Use empowering language:<\/strong> Aston Universities Vice Chancellor, Professor Dame Julia King \u00a0says \u00a0women tend to use more cautious, less aggressive\/assertive language, and often apologise for what they are about to say \u00a0- \u2018This isn't quite my subject area, but perhaps you might consider\u2026\u2019 \u2018I am not sure this is exactly relevant, but\u2026\u2019 This can be interpreted as weakness and makes what women\u00a0say easier to dismiss or ignore.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Banish Negative Self-Talk:<\/strong>\u00a0It is\u00a0amazing how self-talk can lead us in to or out of a situation. If you can, take time to visualise the discussion or event going well rather than thinking of the things that may go wrong. \u00a0Ask yourself, 'whats the worst that could happen?' - when you do this, \u00a0you get a clarity\u00a0and a bit of fear vanishes.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Take a risk:<\/strong>\u00a0Become comfortable with things that you don\u2019t know, and turn your <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/2015\/02\/06\/women-success-starts-with-failure\/\">fear and failures<\/a> into an eagerness to learn new skills.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Celebrate your successes:<\/strong>\u00a0The best confidence boost is to celebrate your successes and keep reminding yourself of it by writing them on post-it notes. Then have them displayed in an area that you can view each day e.g.\u00a0kitchen, wardrobe, medicine cabinet etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Lets <a href=\"#makeithappen\">#makeithappen<\/a> in 2015!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All around the world, International Women\u2019s Day represents an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of women while calling for greater equality.\u00a0Make It Happen is the 2015 theme for International Women s Day\u00a0encouraging effective action for advancing and recognising women. \u00a0A...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[748],"tags":[92,71,93,72],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","tag-international-womens-day","tag-leadership","tag-mentoring","tag-women"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}