The drip drip effect of ruining women's ambitions

This book sounds really interesting. It's about how discouraging female ambition is the standard in our society and how that is undermining female equality. Women are basically taught from day one to put themselves second, to put on a false humility lest they be accused of "bragging" and to outright demean themselves.

Fels calls it the "gender recognition differential." Men routinely expect their goals and achievements to be valued, and they seek recognition from others when it's not forthcoming. But then they can always count on an audience primed to appreciate individualistic achievement and the competitive drive that fuels it. Despite 30 years of modern feminism, women still labor as the recognizers: generic listeners and deferential conversational partners. Fels says it flat out: "[T]he mandate that females provide recognition to males is a basic requirement of the white, middle-class notion of femininity." The idea runs rampant through the mainstream psychological and sociological literature. Study after study proposes that women's identity is more "relational," defined by efforts to support, help, and nurture; that men's sense of self is goal-oriented, based on achievement.

I've noticed that very few things upset people more than having it pointed out to them how women are routinely demeaned and denied and this habit is built into our everyday life. Things like how women are chastisted for "bragging" but men are simply commended when they draw attention to their accomplishments, or how most women must pronounce the word "sorry" about 1500 times a day, apologizing for every tiny little thing, no matter how little they had to do with it. (Example: Boyfriend comes in, complains that his back is aching again. I say, "I'm sorry." It's a tic, but I have been unsuccessful in dropping it from my speech. Am I afraid that I will be regarded as a ball-busting bitch if I stop apologizing for everything?)
Well, people don't like it, but facts are facts and that women are badly regarded is a fact. And women aren't just generally overly deferential. It's still a male/female issue--women defer to men more than to women and men ignore women more than men.

Women's deferential demeanor varies greatly, it turns out, depending on whether or not men are around. "Girls and women change their behaviors when their interactions involve men," she finds. "They more openly seek and compete for affirmation when they are with other women." The corollary is that they are least likely to make claims on others' attention when they are competing face-to-face with men for available recognition—in a conversation, say, or a meeting....
One ingenious study shows that men's attention flags if a taped phone message is in a woman's rather than a man's voice.

I mean, obviously there are exceptions. We all know of women who are really good at speaking up and we all know men who are remarkably good at being respectful to women. But how are assertive women and respectful men usually regarded by most people? Not well, most of the time, with assertive women getting singled out for criticism more than nearly anybody, by both men and women.
What can we do about this very serious obstacle to female equality? I have no idea. If you are a woman and you try to make yourself more assertive, you run the very real risk of getting labeled a bitch and face even more discrimination. That's one of the biggest reasons that women don't stand up for themselves, because most of them know from experience that you could ruin relationships with co-workers, friends, and family members, and you probably won't get what you stood up for anyway, because no one will support you. Men clearly need to take time and think about how they treat women and do what they can to be more respectful, but how can they be convinced to do it? I don't know, I really don't.

Of course, there is one kind of assertive woman that gets rewarded handsomely for her behavior--women who will loudly and proudly say that all women that aren't them need to shut up and get back in the kitchen. These women get fat paychecks from Scaife-funded think tanks. And Ann Coulter gets called a man, which is pretty much a compliment in anti-feminist circles.