Women: Realize that the offer of help does not imply weakness
Many women don’t mind an offer of help. But those who wrestle with it do so out of concern that the guy thinks we are the little woman who needs his help and can’t do it on our own.
We need to get over it.
Perhaps 100 years ago, that negative assumption may have been there among some men; I don’t know. But today, both in the response to this blog and in many of our research interviews over the years, a man’s offer means something very different.
As one very representative man explained: “If I offer to help someone with their luggage, it is because I am helpful, not because I think they aren’t capable.”
Another man in his 40s said, “It is a matter of general respect. I extend help not because a woman is ‘less than,’ but because it is common courtesy and respect for another person. It is how I was raised. I am certainly never thinking, ‘Hey, this 28-year-old woman is so weak I need to get the door for her.’ I think most of us guys just want to help.”
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