Credit Theft: How Modesty Conditioning Sets Women Up to Fail
Think about a time when you were proud of an accomplishment, and the credit for that accomplishment was given to someone else. I think most people have experienced at least one instance of this — whether it be at home, school, on a ballfield, or at a job. How did you react? What were you conditioned to believe is the appropriate response?
As a woman working in predominantly white, male spaces for many years of my career, I’ve been conditioned toward modesty and humility, and it’s been conveyed to me that correcting an inaccurate distribution of credit for something I accomplished is “tactless”, “nitpicky” or otherwise in poor form. In my experience, the most overpaid, least productive people whose ascents to power are the most questionable are also the most likely to attribute a hardworking, talented individual’s contributions to a “team effort” and diminish the people who actually do work.
To be sure, there are group outputs in which credit spread across a “team effort” is truly merited, but where a project or program was conceptualized and managed by one person, and it never would have happened but for their actions, that person can be rightfully called the leader of that initiative. What happens when they aren’t? Besides being a hit to a person’s confidence and sense of being valued by their colleagues and organization, it can have dire consequences for a person’s career. I frame this in the context of gender and race because the reality is, it is far more likely that the work of women — and especially women of the global majority — will be credited to people who were barely involved, much less instrumental, to its success.
We see this all the time. From the conveniently forgotten work around global warming by Eunice Newton Foote to white women getting paid to co-opt Dr. Carey Yazeed’s critical analysis of courage culture, the creative brilliance and insight of original thinkers is appropriated and leveraged for the gain of others. Beyond the bold inaccuracy of such manipulation of history being wrong on its face, this continuing practice creates very tangible barriers for people who are currently not receiving the benefit of their work.
For better or worse, “experience” in a given field is often the biggest measure of qualification to perform a job; this crosses over from traditional employment to freelance contract work. It’s fair, to a degree, when considering someone to perform a job, to have an expectation that they’ve done it before and thus, know what pitfalls to avoid and/or the path of least resistance to accomplish the task. That said, there are plenty of folks out there claiming “experience” for work they didn’t actually execute. As between the person whose contribution was erased, and the person who claimed credit but didn’t actually do the work, who is the most “experienced?” Who ends up landing that executive role or big-budget contract? You know the answer, and it’s not right.
We talk a lot about extraction of value these days, and this is a key example that’s not getting enough attention. In my opinion, the conditioning we receive to “graciously” allow our contributions to be diminished for fear of looking egotistical fosters silence around discussing this issue itself. I often hear people say, and I myself have said, “I don’t care about who gets the credit.” And it’s true. Fundamentally, I don’t care. It’s when I need to present a list of my accomplishments to people who are trying to ascertain whether they want to pay me to do something that it becomes a problem. So now I care. Yet admitting that I want to get credit for my work still may be viewed as “distasteful,” though I can’t imagine anyone would argue that it’s distasteful to want to be well-positioned for financial opportunities to be able to pay your bills.
The problem is, these things are intimately connected. Here are a few concrete examples of how/where credit-stealing can tangibly interfere with a person’s livelihood:
1. Layoffs. At least officially, the decisions about which employees to terminate as a result of budget cuts and reorganization boils down to which employees are considered “dispensable” or not. When a person is not properly and visibly credited for accomplishments, this can directly translate into management deciding that the cost of keeping that person is not balanced by their value to the company. I have seen in my own life where the result here is a do-nothing manager keeping his job, while a hard-working, effective employee is given the proverbial pink slip. Hard to get more tangible than that.
2. Promotions. Putting aside nepotism-like frat-linked boys’ clubs (which we can’t really put aside, but just suspend disbelief for the moment), promotions should at least theoretically be given as rewards for demonstrated excellence and potential to lead. If your excellence and potential to lead is demonstrated but not recognized, how exactly are you supposed to position yourself for a promotion? And worse, if you’ve allowed credit theft to stand and another person has already claimed credit for your work, you may even be in a situation where you’re in competition for the promotion with the person who stole your credit — which can take you further down the “no-no” rabbit hole of failing to be a “team player.” This has application, as well, to consultants who may have their contributions diminished or credit stolen, and thereby are not viewed as the valuable resource that they should be; in this case, your ability to land a new contract can be subverted.
3. New opportunities. If you’ve ever been in the position of having roles where you worked “behind the scenes” and wrote content upon which others’ names were slapped, for example, you can find yourself without work samples to provide prospective employers and/or clients. Personally, I lost track long ago of the amount of content I’ve produced for organizations that employed me, yet very little of it actually bears my name. This became a real barrier when I was interviewing and submitting bids for writing gigs. This is not only an issue for writers; any form of work product can be miscredited, which removes it from a person’s treasure chest of examples they would otherwise be able to use to demonstrate skill, expertise and value to prospective clients or employers.
4. Ability to expand. Quite tragically, in my opinion, access to publications and media tends to be seriously thwarted for those who are not “known players.” I often see articles come out of prominent publications that are mediocre regurgitations of others’ ideas with no added texture or depth. Why? Because they go back to the same people who already have established names. For those who toil behind the scenes in obscurity, it can be very difficult to access platforms which would broaden your reach and impact.
These are only a few manifestations of the damage we do to ourselves by allowing others to take credit for our work. We are taught that it is tacky, egocentric, overly ambitious and distasteful to correct someone who diminishes our contributions to efforts by directing credit and accolades to others (or themselves). And we need to let that narrative go, because it only ends up hurting us.
I absolutely value humility in a spiritual context, and I am keenly aware of the ways in which the human ego run rampant is incredibly toxic. That said, those of us who have been conditioned against ensuring we are credited for our actual performance, accomplishments and impact are doing ourselves a disservice by adhering to this sort of humility in a professional context.
I long for a world where our value is not tied to what we “do” and we don’t have to continuously prove our “worth” in order to have the resources to eat food and keep roofs over our heads. Since we are a long way from that world, and quite frankly, we cannot rely on those who are eager to devour the fruits of our labor to do the right thing, we need to position ourselves for success — and that entails demanding and receiving credit where credit is due. Otherwise, we may literally be letting people take money out of our pockets.
