Christiane Amanpour was one of four daughters, and at yesterday’s New York Women in Communications 2014 Matrix Awards, she told us that “she never grew up in this atmosphere that women somehow couldn’t do X, Y, or Z.”
We asked her about the “confidence gap” proposed in the Atlantic earlier this month — which argued that women’s self-doubt holds them back professionally — and she remarked pointedly that she had ‘never suffered from this ‘confidence gap.’” She’s “upset,” she said, “by these articles on confidence. To be honest with you, I think it’s reinforcing and beating a dead horse. There are so many women out there who just don’t get noticed.”
Amanpour went on, “Let’s face it: 40 percent of the American households are being powered by women. Women are either the sole or main breadwinners in 40 percent of American households. And multiply that by a million around the world. Women are the main breadwinners.” She suggested that “parity,” not “this notion that we’re not confident somehow,” is the problem.
“Now is the time to leverage our major, formidable economic power,” she told a gathering crowd of rapt, mostly female reporters. “Negotiate like guys, get what we want, get what we deserve, and forget this confidence gap B.S.”
