A few weeks ago, I was asked at an event how to act in a situation where your determination and directness are being labeled as aggression. My first thought was, why should you care what people think if all they do is try to pull the rug from under your feet?

Key Takeaways

• Embrace Your Unique Leadership Style: Recognize that your determination and directness are strengths, not flaws.
• Challenge Traditional Power Structures: Actively question and disrupt unequal power dynamics in your environment.
• Focus on Personal Goals: Prioritize what truly matters to you over societal expectations.
• Cultivate Inner Confidence: Trust in your abilities and decisions, irrespective of external validation. 
• Leverage Formality Strategically: Use formal titles and language to assert your authority and create professional boundaries.
• Redefine Success: Understand that success is measured not solely by money or status but by your impact and fulfillment.
• Advocate for Equality: Support initiatives and practices that promote gender equality and diversity in the workplace.
• Stay Informed and Empowered: Continuously educate yourself about power dynamics and use this knowledge to navigate and reshape your environment.

But not caring about certain people isn’t always that easy, especially if you care about your work, the impact your work has, and how people perceive you. At the end of the day, the perception people have of others is what ultimately gives them power. Meaning the ability to act, move things, and turn ideas into reality. And isn’t that something that, ultimately, most of us are interested in? 

Regrettably, we have also been made to believe that power comes with money. However, in reality, power comes with status. And status, and ultimately power, is given by people to people. The trust that people have in someone, how they speak about them, and the visibility they give that particular person are all symbols of power.

Unfortunately, though, in daily practice, we don’t speak about power often enough, except when describing people who abuse their power. Additionally, the word ‘power’ has negative connotations and is often being equalized with corruption.

The social concept of power. 

Power is fundamental to human interactions and social structures, influencing the dynamics within groups, institutions, and societies. Social science analyzes and understands power in various ways, depending on the context and the specific discipline. Generally speaking, researchers describe power as a social mechanism that is part of social structures and roles. Power in itself isn’t abusive; rather, it describes the ability of someone to exert influence.

In sociology, power is usually described as a key to establishing and maintaining social hierarchies. It determines who has authority, influence, and control over resources and decision-making processes within a group or a society. Power also shapes the formation and function of social structures and institutions, such as family units, educational systems, and economic organizations. 

Understanding how these power dynamics function is essential, particularly when we want to create social change. Power is also closely interlinked to social inequalities, which result from unequal social structures recreated through deficient power structures. 

Further, studying power helps us understand how social change occurs and how individuals and groups resist or challenge existing power structures. It allows us to understand how social change and resistance can be created. 

In psychology and sociology, power plays a role in examining how individuals within groups or relationships assert influence and control over one another on an individual basis, which aligns with the very beginning of this article. This gives us insight into group dynamics and interpersonal relationships.

Why you need to understand power structures and how understanding them gives you a sense of holding power yourself.

Many of the stories we carry within us are fuelled by the core belief that we only matter if we care about others—more so if we can put others’ dreams and needs ahead of our own. These beliefs are fuelled by social structures and role expectations that are kept alive by power structures. We inadvertently fuel these power structures by interacting with the people around us. 

The second belief holding us back is that we don’t have significance if we are not achieving something. But, that achievement is just partially defined, and to our detriment, it was determined by a specific group of men throughout history. 

And what’s even more unfortunate is that no matter how much we push for equality, more than receiving a seat at the table is needed. Women’s concerns (and minority concerns, too) are not men’s concerns. Having a seat at the table isn’t changing it. If it were, our world would certainly start to look different. The problem isn’t necessarily that power is being held by just one group. The problem is that power is unequally distributed across our societies, and to add insult to injury, we are then recreating these power structures daily without even being aware that we are doing it.

This is where knowledge comes in. In this case, knowledge is power because it allows us to break down these power structures.

One example of breaking a power structure is by ensuring that you are being referred to formally by your last name instead of informally by your first name, as this creates not only a distance between you and the other person but it also prevents others from diminishing your power. Languages such as German, Spanish, and French also create hierarchies by using a polite version of you: the Sie, Usted, Votre. While these create hierarchies, which are not always something we want, they allow women and minorities to use them to their advantage by creating an appropriate distance. 

Knowing how power structures are being established enables you to create them for yourself over time.

The second obstacle that women and minorities face when creating social change.

Money rules the world because it is also a very visible barometer of your success. And in many circles, it alone reflects the supposed power you have. At least, that’s what society makes us believe. And I am not speaking about the money that you need to survive. I am speaking about the money that goes beyond that and gives you the ability to be impactful and fulfill your ideas, even more, create sustainable change that impacts many lives. And isn’t that one of the core ideas of womanhood: we are supposed to care, but we are not given the tools and resources to care in a way that drastically improves lives?

Money, like power, is a double-edged sword. We need it, but we don’t like talking about it, which is why money negotiations are so difficult for many women. Or, actually, negotiations altogether. 
So, here we are in a world in which power and money are being portrayed as manly and unfeminine, powerful yet a necessary evil which, when women possess it, is seen as treacherous.

The Social Trap

Being trapped somewhere between caring and the inability to act portrays the main debacle of womanhood because it creates a constant form of anxiety. The anxiety to perform and to deliver. And then it becomes really fun when we start looking a little bit deeper into the whole story of humanity and realize that we have been made to believe that if we are not succeeding, it is our own fault, not the fault of society or the people around us. It’s a bit like forcing someone who has never ever in their life hit a golf ball to compete in the Master’s Open and then calling them incompetent for not winning!

Or forcing someone to climb Mount Everest without adequate equipment and calling them uneducated and stupid when dying along the way. Or holding a gun against someone’s head and asking them to perform a flawless surgery. 

The surprising thing is that millions of women worldwide are performing to the highest standards despite the obstacles, outdated social structures, and a social system that simply wasn’t designed for us to succeed in.

And that’s precisely why you need to stop caring what others think of you or, rather, what others expect of you. While caring might be a more natural characteristic of women (even that is being disproved in some studies (“Why females care more, theoretically”).

Women around the world need to stop caring about other people’s opinions. Instead, start working on their status. 

VC firms don’t care about social and environmental issues when choosing a company to invest in. They care about profitability, and men’s businesses are supposedly more profitable (research has shown the opposite, but prevailing stories still beg to differ!). 

Overall, men experience higher health risks; therefore, most of the medical research is being designed by and around men (research has yet to show that men experience more illness than women; medical research is rather designed around the dominating story that men are more important to society and easier to be studied).

Why must we stop caring about what society expects of us?

So here is the ‘rub’. Men are no more competent than women (in fact, women-run startups outperform men-run startups between 12% – 36% depending on the sector)*. The real difference is that men control the social structures in which we all operate so women have extra steps in the ladders they have to climb…or do they? Those extra steps only exist while women continue to recognize them and that is why we have to stop caring about what others think and what society expects of us.

To ‘level the playing field’ and give women equal opportunities, we have to ignore the demands male-led society is putting on us and, instead, concentrate solely on what is important in achieving our aims. In other words, women have to stop caring about others’ perceptions and unequivocally focus on where they are going in this life. The more we understand the basis of power, the more we will discover hoops solely for us to jump through. And, as we avoid those hoops, it will become more and more obvious what we actually should be caring about and what we really can afford to stop caring about.

*A recent study from Boston Consulting Group evaluated 350 companies that had been part of the MassChallenge program. The study revealed that female-run startups generated 78 cents in revenue for every dollar of investment raised, whereas male-run startups generated only 31 cents.

Additional Articles: 

The Value of Investing in Female Founders