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Confidence Culture

Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill discuss how imperatives directed at women to “love your body” and “believe in yourself” imply that psychological blocks hold women back rather than entrenched social injustices.
Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill discuss how imperatives directed at women to “love your body” and “believe in yourself” imply that psychological blocks hold women back rather than entrenched social injustices.
Wednesday 23 March 2022 | 1 hour 34 minutes 53 seconds
Download File | 76.04MB

Interrogating the prominence of confidence in contemporary discourse about body image, workplace, relationships, motherhood, and international development, Orgad and Gill demonstrate how "confidence culture" demands of women near-constant introspection and vigilance in the service of self-improvement. They argue that while confidence messaging may feel good, it does not address structural and systemic oppression.

Rather, confidence culture suggests that women—along with people of colour, the disabled, and other marginalised groups—are responsible for their own conditions. Rejecting confidence culture’s remaking of feminism along individualistic and neoliberal lines, Orgad and Gill explore alternative articulations of feminism that go beyond the confidence imperative.