Why So Many Women Struggle to Put Themselves Forward for Recognition
By Clare Muscutt, Founder and CEO, Women in CX
A woman can lead a difficult transformation, change how her organisation understands its customers or create better conditions for employees—and still hesitate when someone suggests nominating her for an award.
Her first response may be to name everyone else involved.
She might question whether the work was significant enough. Compare herself with people who appear more accomplished. Decide she needs another year of results before she can claim any credit.
Sometimes, she simply does not know how to explain what she contributed without feeling as though she is taking credit away from the team.
These reactions are familiar to many women. They also help explain why valuable work remains unseen.
The problem extends beyond awards. The ability to communicate your contribution affects promotion decisions, professional reputation, speaking invitations and access to new opportunities.
Good work does not automatically become visible to the people making those decisions. Someone has to explain what changed, why it mattered and who helped make it happen.
For many women, that is where recognition begins to break down.
The discomfort of claiming individual contribution
Most significant work is collaborative. Customer experience, transformation and technology depend on people working across functions, navigating competing priorities and making decisions together.
Women who value that collaboration can feel uncomfortable separating their own contribution from the work of the group.
They default to “we”.
“We redesigned the journey.”
“We introduced a new insight programme.”
“We improved the employee experience.”
This language may be accurate, but it leaves an important question unanswered: what did she contribute?
Describing an individual contribution does not require someone to claim sole responsibility for a collective achievement. It requires precision.
What did she recognise that others had missed? Which decision did she influence? What resistance did she overcome? What did she personally design, lead or change?
Without those details, the scale of her contribution remains hidden.
When the work feels too ordinary to be recognised
People often judge their achievements from inside the work.
They remember the meetings, the compromises, the unfinished tasks and the things they would do differently. What appears impressive to somebody outside the organisation may feel routine to the person who delivered it.
This is particularly common when the work is closely connected to someone’s strengths. If influencing senior leaders, making sense of customer evidence or bringing disconnected teams together comes naturally to her, she may underestimate the expertise involved.
She may also be working in an organisation where difficult delivery has become normal. Solving problems under pressure no longer feels exceptional because she does it every week.
An award nomination asks her to step outside that experience and assess the work as evidence of professional impact. Many women have had little support in learning how to do that.
The evidence is rarely collected for her
Organisations are usually better at recording the outputs of work than the contribution of the people behind it.
They count projects completed, systems launched, surveys conducted and people trained. These measures show activity. They do not reveal who made the critical decisions or what changed as a result.
By the time someone decides to enter an award, much of the evidence may be scattered across presentations, dashboards, customer comments and messages from colleagues.
The woman at the centre of the work is then expected to reconstruct the story while continuing to do her job.
If she cannot find a perfect commercial metric, she may conclude that the achievement cannot be proved. Yet credible evidence can take several forms: changes in customer behaviour, employee feedback, operational improvements, stakeholder testimony or a measurable shift from the original position.
The challenge is recognising which evidence matters and connecting it to the contribution being described.
Confidence is only part of the problem
It is tempting to describe women’s reluctance to put themselves forward as a confidence issue.
That explanation places too much responsibility on the individual.
Recognition is shaped by who gets encouraged, whose achievements are documented and which types of work organisations value. Some people have managers and sponsors who help them identify opportunities and articulate their impact. Others are expected to work it out alone.
Awards processes can introduce further barriers. Entry fees may make participation difficult without an employer’s support. Complex criteria can favour people with access to professional entry writers. Industry recognition frequently centres companies and technology providers, while the women responsible for making change happen receive less attention.
Telling women to be more confident does not address these conditions. We need recognition processes that make participation more accessible and help women understand how to communicate their work.
Why we created the Inspiring Women in CX Awards™
We created the Inspiring Women in CX Awards™ to recognise individual women working across customer experience and technology.
The awards are free to enter. They are also free to judge.
Our categories recognise different forms of contribution, including responsible AI, customer insight and intelligence, experience design, transformation, employee experience, inclusion, collaboration and wider industry impact.
This matters because valuable work does not follow one career path. Leadership can be demonstrated through a major organisational programme, but it can also be found in the person who challenged a harmful decision, created a more inclusive service or helped other women progress.
Every entry is judged by members of the Women in CX Inner Circle. They give their time to understand the work, examine the evidence and decide which women should be recognised.
But removing the entry fee only addresses one barrier.
Women also need practical help to recognise their own achievements and explain them clearly.
A free masterclass on communicating your impact
On 10 September 2026, we will open nominations for the Inspiring Women in CX Awards™ 2026 with a free live masterclass.
The session has been designed for women considering putting themselves forward, people who want to nominate someone else and anyone who finds it difficult to communicate their professional impact.
We will examine why women’s contributions are frequently underestimated—including by the women themselves—and help participants identify an achievement they may have overlooked.
An experienced awards judge will explain what judges need to understand from an entry, the gaps that weaken otherwise strong nominations and how to distinguish activity from impact.
We will also introduce the WiCX IMPACT Framework™:
Identify the challenge
Measure the starting point
Explain the nominee’s Personal contribution
Describe the Actions she took
Show the Change created
Tell the story with evidence
The framework provides a practical structure for turning work into a clear account of contribution and results. It can also be used beyond the awards—in performance conversations, applications, professional profiles and discussions about progression.
Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of what they have achieved, how to evidence it and how to write a nomination that allows judges to assess the work properly.
Whose work have you stopped noticing?
Recognition can begin with a nomination. Before that comes attention.
Think about the women you work with, have learned from or have watched create change.
Who consistently improves the quality of decisions?
Who makes the workplace better for other people?
Who has delivered something significant but would never describe herself as award-worthy?
She may need someone else to recognise the achievement before she can see it clearly herself.
And if the woman you are thinking of is you, the same standards should apply.
The Inspiring Women in CX Awards™ 2026 Launch & FREE Live Masterclass takes place on 10 September 2026, when nominations officially open.