Charmain Bogue on Empowering Women Who Are Afraid to Take Up Space The problem isn't confidence. It's that nobody built the floor under them. I've sat across from women who run departments, women who've launched companies, women who hold advanced degrees and have decades of experience, and watched them shrink. Not physically, though sometimes that too. But in the way they talk about themselves. The qualifiers. The apologies before opinions. The way they attribute success to luck or timing or the team, anything but their own ability. We love to call this a confidence problem. I don't think that's what it is. I think it's a structural problem dressed up as an individual one. And until we stop telling women to just "be more confident" and start looking at the systems that trained them to be small, we're going to keep having the same conversation. Charmain Bogue has been mentoring women for years, through formal programs, and in less formal ways t...