CLOSING THE CONFIDENCE GAP WITH SAMANTHA BEE.

As women speak out about sexual harassment in the workplace and the need for gender parity, they’ve found a role model in late night comedian Samantha Bee

The first thing you notice when you enter the reception area of Samantha Bee’s Manhattan office are the letters. Giant and glittery like a circus marquee, they don’t just spell out the title of her late night show, they proclaim it: “FULL FRONTAL WITH SAMANTHA BEE.” But as loud as front of house is, it’s all business down the hall, which opens up onto dull cubicles, with walls unadorned and lights dimmed in favour of the winter sun pouring in from the windows. It’s a subdued atmosphere, until you reach the communal writing space. Crowded with yellow and purple plastic chairs and tables, it resembles a kindergarten classroom. Boxes of banners sporting slogans like “the only thing he’s capable of is running his mouth” pack the shelves. On the far wall, a Young Sheldon cardboard dummy leans against a floor- toceiling schedule which, sticky note by sticky note, plots the subjects f or t he episodes ahead. It’s here where staff writers pinball ideas off each other as the occasional producer walks by, all smiles and sweatpants. A little less Aaron Sorkin and a bit more Nancy Meyers, it’s a writer’s space through and through: haphazard and immediately comfortable. It also offers a stark contrast to the livewire set just down the street where everything crafted in this quiet bubble is brought to life. Before the circus begins, however, the writers and produc-

A WOMAN’S VOICE BOTHERS THEIR EARDRUMS. THEIR EAR CANALS CAN’T HANDLE THE SOUND OF MY SHRILL VOICE TALKING AT THEM ABOUT A SUBJECT. I GUESS I JUST DON’T REALLY CARE ABOUT THOSE PEOPLE

staff await their ringleader. Born and raised in Toronto, Samantha Bee’s career in entertainment began like that of so many aspiring actors – as a waitress. After transferring universities and eventually dropping out of George Brown Theatre School, Bee picked up the odd acting gig while working at the Golden Griddle at Front and Jarvis. Her not- so- big break came in the form of a starring role in a travelling production of Sailor Moon (where she met her husband Jason Jones). But when The Daily Show came to the city in search of new talent, she jumped at the chance to audition. Already a fan of the show, Bee won the part and made her way to New York in 2003 for what would end up being a 12-year stint as the series’ longestrunning correspondent.

When Jon Stewart announced he would be leaving The Daily Show in February 2015, Bee assumed – correctly – that she would be passed over for his job. So before his replacement was even announced, she and Jones had shopped their sitcom, The Detour, to TBS. When it was picked up, the network also offered Bee the opportunity to host her own series. She immediately accepted the chance to become one of the few female hosts of a late-night show. And from the outset, it was clear that she was going to do things her own way. Full Frontal promoted its premiere with New York bus ads reading, “Watch or you’re sexist” and a trailer warning viewers, “I am female as f—k.”

That kind of confidence has renewed relevance as sexual harassment and gender equality in the workplace dominate both the headlines and late night scripts. Bee is a role model for women tired of keeping their voices down, or looking the other way. And nowhere is that more evident than in her writers room – where 50 per cent of the staff are female. “It’s not that hard to do,” Bee says. “I don’t mean to congratulate ourselves, but it’s actually really easy and we’ve had no problem finding plenty of great women.”

Former Full Frontal executive producer Jo Miller explained the motivation to The New York Times by recalling a trend she had noticed during exit interviews with Daily Show interns. Before leaving, they would be asked if they wanted to continue working in the industry. The responses were always split between gender, Miller said. “It’s always, ‘I’m Kyle – yeah, I’m going to be a writer.’ ‘I’m John, I want to be a writer.’ ‘I’m Melinda, I don’t know, maybe. I’m not really good enough. Maybe someday.’ Somewhere in between the unearned overconfidence of the young men, and the unwarranted self-censorship of the young women, the truth lies.”

It’s a pattern called The Confidence Gap. First coined by therapist and author Russ Harris in his 2011 self- help book of the same name, it’s defined as “that place we get stuck when fear gets in the way of our dreams and ambitions.” In 2014, journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman added more nuance to the definition with their book, The Confidence Code. Using the phrase to describe how women fall victim to selfdoubt more frequently than men, the pair theorize that the confidence gap is to blame for the comparative lack of success women experience in the business world.

Marilyn Davidson, a professor at England’s Manchester Business School, explains in the book that each year she asks her students what they expect to earn and what they deserve to earn, five years after graduation. “I’ve been doing this for about seven years,” she says, “and every year there are massive differences between the male and female responses. The male students expect to earn significantly more than the women, and when you look at what the students think they deserve to earn, again the differences are huge.” On average, she says, men think they deserve $ 80,000 a year, while women believe they deserve a relatively paltry $64,000. The women at a prestigious business school essentially believe themselves to be 20 per cent less valuable than men.

It’s a mentality prevalent across industry. Despite women earning more than half of the university degrees and 40 per cent of the MBAs handed out in North America, only three per cent of Fortune 500 companies are run by female CEOs. How men and women approach job interviews seems to set the baseline for this disparity. In Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s seminal feminist workplace manifesto Lean In, she cites an internal report at Hewlett- Packard that revealed women only apply for jobs if they think they meet 100 per cent of the criteria listed. Meanwhile, men apply if they think they meet 60 per cent of the requirements.

How women are treated by employers seems to mirror this disparity: Based on a survey of 2,500 American men and women in business by the Wall Street Journal’s McKinsey Report, researchers found that women were often evaluated for promotions based on their track record and performance, while men were more likely to be promoted based on their potential. In other words, women are judged on objective competence, while men are more likely to be assessed based on the impression they make – something that they can directly influence through their confidence.

Even as traditional gender roles continue to shift – more women in Canada are university-educated than ever before and, according to Statistics Canada, over 47 per cent of the workforce in 2014 was made up of women – both men and women are still culturally conditioned to see confidence as a male trait. And the learning starts young.

According to UCLA psychology professor Michelle Craske, by the age of 15 a girl is six times more likely to develop an anxiety disorder than a boy. “From a socialization angle, there’s quite a lot of evidence that little girls who exhibit shyness or anxiety are reinforced for it,” she told Slate, “whereas little boys who exhibit that behaviour might even be punished for it.” The difference in expectations we place on young women – that they exhibit a femininity that is both meek and mild – and young men – “boys will be boys” – is the beginning of the cycle leading to the confidence gap.

It’s a common pattern, illustrated by a 2012 Communication Research study in which 400 students from seven to 12 years old were surveyed, with findings showing that the selfesteem of girls lowers while watching TV, while that of boys rises. But nowhere is this lack of confidence in women more apparent than in STEM ( science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education and jobs. According to Statistics Canada, in 1987, 20 per cent of the STEM workforce was female. By 2015, that number had risen to a mere 22 per cent.

Despite reams of research confirming that women do not suffer from an innate inability to understand complicated math, the stereotype prevails that men’s brains are superior in the “hard” sciences. Even the former president of Harvard, Larry Summers, suggested that the under- representation of women in science and engineering could be due to a “different availability of aptitude at the high end.” What Summers – who later resigned in part because of his comments – failed to consider is the early age at which discrimination and conditioning begins.

Girls internalize this as early as primary school. According to last year’s Education Quality and Accountability Office standardized test, only 49 per cent of Grade 3 girls in Ontario felt that they were good at math compared to 62 per cent of boys. The difference grows for girls but barely shifts for boys as they get older. Out of the Grade 6 students surveyed, 46 per cent of girls said they were good at math compared to 61 per cent of boys. The cyclical nature of this effect becomes even more pronounced when we consider a 2009 study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America that found female elementary school teachers passed on their anxieties about math to their female students, but not their male students.

The conditioning of women to doubt themselves is so strong that even the most accomplished suffer from imposter syndrome – the belief that, no matter one’s achievements, there is a risk of being exposed as a fake. Despite her leadership role at Facebook, the aforementioned Sheryl Sandberg told Kay and Shipman, “There are still days I wake up feeling like a fraud, not sure I should be where I am.” Contributing to the sense that a successful women is somehow out of place is our tendency to judge powerful people along gender lines, subconsciously and otherwise. Scroll through the comments on any Samantha Bee video on YouTube, and you’ll discover a litany of gender-based slurs that simply don’t exist for the male members of late night television.

In her bestselling book I Hear She’s a Real Bitch, Toronto restaurateur Jen Agg takes on the “crazy” and “bitch” labels that are applied to successful women, blaming “an insane double standard applied to men and women in life and in work.” Agg goes on to describe how she is regularly portrayed in the media as an “outspoken” restaurateur: “Doesn’t sound so bad, right? Until you’ve seen it over and over again, and it occurs to you it’s not meant as a compliment, and it’s never used to describe equally outspoken men who own restaurants. They, by contrast, get awesome adjectives like ‘ rebel,’ ‘ mastermind,’ and ‘ the innovative.’ What the writers actually mean when using ‘outspoken,’ even if they aren’t always fully aware of it, is ‘ rabble- rouser,’ ‘shit-disturber,’ ‘ troublemaker.’”

“Men don’t have to worry about being disliked for incisive business decisions,” Agg continues. They are lauded for their hand- on- the- tiller leadership style. Women, on the other hand, are endlessly criticized for actions that are objectively the same.”

In Bee’s case, the euphemism is “bold.” While the adjective is sometimes used to describe her willingness to tackle any subject, more often than not it’s a coded term for her being loud and aggressive – a “nasty woman.” Using her platform to skewer current events and public figures only seems to attract additional vitriol. “Nothing is taboo,” Bee says, unfazed. “My nature is to be topical. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do, so I couldn’t possibly avoid the news of the day. Nor would I want to. People are engaged. They want to hear about what’s going on. If they don’t, they don’t have to tune in.”

Or as she quipped in an interview with The Cut in 2016, “There are plenty of people who won’t tune in because a woman’s voice bothers their eardrums. Their ear canals can’t handle the sound of my shrill voice talking at them about a subject. I guess I just don’t really care about those people.”

While the term “girl power” might induce eye- rolls today, its intention in early and mid- 90s punk and pop culture was to inspire confidence at an early age. The confidence gap is nothing new, but like “girl power,” it’s become increasingly applicable to the current climate as women not only speak out about sexual harassment in the workplace (#MeToo) and the need for gender parity ( Time’s Up), but are finally heard.

As those two movements continue to identify gender bias and discrimination, the onus is placed on men to alter their behaviour and open their minds to our historic systemic imbalances. What Bee embodies is the female response that those two movements need: her brand of confidence is the next step forward for women. That’s not to say that all women need to be like Samantha Bee, but it’s acknowledging that they can be and still be valued for it, even in the face of criticism.

On Wednesday, Bee began her third season of Full Frontal by wishing her show a happy second birthday. “Now that we’re in our terrible twos, we can finally scream and throw rage fits about the people in power,” she gleefully declared, her voice laced with more than just a hint of sarcasm. “Things are gonna be so much different around here. Come and see how we’ve grown!” Only the most confident among us could produce such a wink.