Women, stop saying sorry. Just stop

Yahoo Lifestyle Australia’s new columnist Edwina Munns is an advocate for working mothers. She has navigated the Weapons of Mass Destruction Branch of the United Nations, uprooted her family to deep rural France, and tried to learn Mandarin three times. Today, she’s probably doing two loads of laundry and wondering if beans on toast is a nutritionally sound dinner. You can follow her over at Edwina Munns.

I recently witnessed a serious sorry off, whereby two women exchanged a series of back and forth sorries to each other in a lift.

No one was in the wrong, one simply needed to get in, and the other had to inch her trolley slightly back to create enough space.

‘Sorry!! So sorry!’ the women offered each other repeatedly, stuck in an apologetic loop that only ended when the doors closed.

It’s not new news that women are typically apologetic. It’s what we do.

Studies have proven what we already know to be true, and the apologetic woman has long been canonised in popular culture (shout out to several of Diane Keaton’s characters).

It’s so relatable that tweets about how easily women apologise often go viral, and last year a US TV channel edited out women saying ‘sorry’ for International Women’s Day.

If 2018 kicked off the #metoo movement, let’s follow up in 2019 by quitting apologising for taking up space, having an opinion, or simply ‘being’.

Disturbingly, I only had to look as far as my inbox to recognise my own sorry state of affairs.

During a quick exchange with another woman I counted no less than five back and forth apologies from both parties before we nailed the intended action.

‘So sorry to bother you’, ‘please feel free to disregard if inconvenient’, ‘sincere apologies for the multiple emails’.

We’ve known that Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office for years, and in Radical Candor Kim Scott encourages us to be polite but direct, firm and confident. So why aren’t we listening?

There is of course an art to saying sorry (immediately and genuinely) when it’s required. If you ding my car, I’ll gladly accept your apology.

But if you need a bit of time to put your kids in their seats while I wait for your parking spot – we’re good.

Let’s collectively stop apologising for leaving work on time. For daring to follow up on someone when they already agreed to deliver something. For taking up space in an elevator.

Save your sorries for when they’re really warranted, and enjoy the freedom that comes with an unapologetic existence.

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