This past week I attended a few events and noticed a common thread. Every time the conversation turned to what someone was starting, the side hustle, the brand, the pivot, the venture, the women in the room played it down. Not because they didn't believe in what they were building, but because it didn't feel earned yet. No traction, no proof, no result to point at. "It's just a little thing I'm working on." "It's still really early." "I don't know if it's going to be anything yet."
The men in the room did not do this.
I assumed it was anecdotal until I went looking. There’s a study by Christine Exley at Harvard Business School and Judd Kessler at Wharton, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, that found a persistent gender gap in self-promotion. Women rate their performance less favourably than equally performing men. And here’s the part that’s stayed with me: the gap holds even when researchers eliminate differences in confidence, and even when they remove all strategic incentive to promote yourself. It’s not about how good women think they are. It’s about what they think they’re allowed to say out loud.
The gap, by the way, arises as early as sixth grade.
So why is it hard to talk about a new beginning? It leaves you exposed. The start of anything is the most vulnerable point on the curve, uncertainty, work in progress, no proof yet. Society taught us that the outcome gets rewarded, not the start. Success is celebrated; the messy first chapter is something you’re supposed to keep quiet about until it works. What if you fail after you’ve told everyone? Building in public is a trend, but it’s also a luxury most women weren’t raised to feel entitled to.
But here’s the reframe worth sitting with. Waiting for the proof point, the milestone, the result, the permission, before you’ll name what you’re building, is the exact same script that hands you back to other people’s approval. I’ll talk about it when it’s real. But it’s already real. You’ve decided. You’ve started. The waiting for traction before you’ll claim it is not modesty. It’s the borrowed belief that you have to earn the right to be seen doing it.
The women I admire don’t wait for the milestone to name the work. They name the work and then build it.
What's Worth Your Attention
Worth Sitting With
External validation is not proof of concept. It’s just proof that other people agreed with what you already knew.
You don’t need anyone to confirm that you’re worth doing the work. You need to be the one who decides that, and then keeps going.
Worth Curating
Taking my own advice. Here is what I’m doing next, and I’m telling you in advance.
I’m going to London. Not as a holiday, as a working trip, the kind where the line between research, taste-building, and rest blurs by design. I’ll be writing from there and another city in Europe for the next two Sundays. Bringing back what’s worth bringing back: the places, the conversations, the objects, the rooms.
The piece I’m working on while I’m there is about the difference between travel as escape and travel as input, and why one of those quietly builds you and the other quietly empties you.
I’ll see you from London next Sunday.
PS: a few pieces I’m taking with me.
From the salon,
— Sabina