The New York Times published an article titled “Why Women Apologize and Should Stop” that deserve some serious applause.

It is true for many women, myself included, “I am sorry” is over-used to show our politeness and is labeled ourselves as weak unnecessarily. According to this study, “women have a lower threshold for what constitutes offensive behavior,” therefore apologize more for the same social situations in which men do not apologize.

To me there is also another reason of why women feeling the need of apologize, even when we are demanding things we deserve – like a raise. We are not confident with ourselves and simply do not think we deserve what we have got, or should have gotten. That is why the society can get away with unequal pay and poor maternity care for so long in such a well-developed economy.

Stop apologizing does not mean we have to behavior rudely. Simply state what we want to say and realize that this is what others need to hear. Only when we stop treating ourselves like the second class, we could stop be treated like the second class.