Women (and others) in Power

For women (and others) it is difficult to be in power. And I am not just talking about the external forces keeping us out of power, here I am speaking about the inner struggle to identify as a person of power, to claim that space. We often have a hard time believing in our own authority. It is not surprising there is an amount of inner resistance to this, considering where we have come from. To be powerful, to disagree (with others in power) was considered highly inappropriate, and still is in many ways. I have been thinking that the legacy of this gets perpetuated two ways:

1) Our own conditioning, e.g. self-criticism, fearfulness
2) Continued external conditioning, i.e. smackdown

Of course these internal and external forces can interact with each other. Smackdown will leave us fearful, being fearful makes us weak, and thus a target of more smackdown.

So what do we do to overcome this?

Much of the power base in academia (and other places) is based on the idea of superiority. Some of this is completely valid:  talent and productivity are important. But a lot of success is fortune, opportunity and training. The whole idea of affirmative action was to give opportunity to the most smacked-down of all: ex-slaves. But is opening up this external opportunity enough? My working hypothesis is that there needs to be an inner transformation as well, and that this path is mostly uncharted, and perhaps very personal to all of us (but perhaps not). This seems to be the work that needs to be done, that we are all on the edge of.

There's a lot more to say on this, on motivation, sources of power and disrespecting authority. But that's a longer conversation and I will leave it here (for now).