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 that don't have program names attached. And the pattern I see over and over is not that women lack confidence. It's that they lack floors.

What I mean by that: when a man takes a risk at work and fails, there's usually a net. Someone mentors him through it. Someone explains it away as a learning experience. He gets another shot. When a woman takes the same risk and fails, she becomes a cautionary tale. She becomes proof that the promotion was premature, that she wasn't ready, that maybe they should go with a safer choice next time.

Women know this. They feel it even when no one says it out loud. So they wait. They over-prepare. They get one more certification, one more year of experience, one more person's approval before they raise their hand. It's not a lack of confidence. It's a rational response to an environment that punishes them differently for the same mistakes.

The programs I'm involved with try to address this by building the floor. Atone of the programs Charmain Bogue supports we're not just telling women they can do hard things. We're connecting them with people who will actually help them do hard things, mentors, sponsors, peers who understand what they're up against. I've worked with founders who need someone to tell them their idea is sound and then help them figure out the next three moves. Not cheerleading. Scaffolding.

There's a particular kind of woman I see a lot in my work: she's in her mid-thirties to mid-forties, she's good at her job, she's probably a mother, and she's hit a ceiling she can't name. It's not a glass ceiling in the traditional sense. It's more like a fog. She can't see what's ahead, so she stays where she is. She tells herself she's being strategic. Really, she's afraid that taking the next step means risking what she's already built, and she's not sure anyone will catch her if she falls.

I was that woman at various points in my career. I know what it feels like to sit on your own potential because the cost of being wrong feels higher than the cost of staying put.

What helps is specific. It's not inspiration. It's someone who's been there saying, "Here's exactly what I did, here's what worked, here's what didn't, and here's what I'd do differently." It's a mentor who makes introductions, not just gives advice. It's a program that creates accountability, not just community.

I also think we need to talk more honestly about the ways women hold each other back. Not because we're bad people, but because scarcity makes people competitive. When there's one seat at the table, the temptation is to protect your spot, not pull up a chair for someone else. The only way to fix that is to build more tables. And to be the person who builds them, even when no one's watching.

Taking up space isn't about being loud. It's about being willing to be seen, to be judged, and to stay there anyway. Most of the women I work with are already brave. They just need someone to remind them.