By: Julia Valencia

Opinion Editor

Let me set the scene: my friends and I decide that we should grab dinner after rowing practice. We have a time and an area set, but when it comes to picking the restaurant, it is next to impossible for us to make a decision. After 16 “I don’t care”s and 12 “No, seriously, you pick!”s, one of two things ends up happening: either A, we forgo dinner altogether, or B, we wind up at our go-to restaurant, where sure, the food is alright, but no one is truly happy with the outcome. This kind of interaction leaves me feeling annoyed and wishing that I, or someone else, had spoken out about what we each wanted instead of suppressing our own opinions to maintain the peace. Especially for women, who are often socially conditioned to be agreeable or accommodating, this pattern highlights a deeper issue. Individuals need to be more decisive, and the stigma that comes with comfortably voicing honest opinions needs to end.

One group often labeled as indecisive is women. This demeaning stereotype is rooted in a long history of men in powerful positions denying women the ability to make decisions for themselves. Men have excluded women from political, financial, and personal decisions for hundreds of years. A societal standard determined by men taught women that they had no authority in the first place. In the United States, women have possessed the right to vote for just over a century, and even today, laws passed by the government, a system meant to fairly represent all US citizens, allow states to restrict women’s choices regarding their own bodies with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. When people joke about women being “unable to decide,” it overlooks generations of systemic control and repression. 

Women are often put into an impossible situation. If a woman is indecisive, people will be frustrated with her incompetence; if she’s decisive, she’s judged for it anyway. When a man knows what he wants, people call him confident and sure, but when a woman knows what she wants, people call her bossy or difficult. So, there is no winning, and the double standard frequently discourages women from speaking up at all. 

Yet this issue expands beyond gender. In our current world—one that requires human connection and decision making to function—society has grown uncomfortable with decisiveness in individuals. Judgment runs rampant, and the fear of standing out or making the “wrong call” affects a person’s willingness to voice their opinion. It doesn’t matter if it is picking a restaurant, expressing a concern, or standing up for a cause that a person believes in; people are so scared of rocking the boat that it seems easier to fall back onto a guise of indecisiveness than it is to actually say what they want or are thinking.

It is time to change how society views decisiveness. Being sure of what you want shouldn’t be something that people look down upon. The indecisiveness epidemic won’t change without collective action. We all need to start implementing the daily active choice of being decisive. Through practice, it will become easier, and remember, don’t be apologetic for voicing your opinion.

(Sources: Brennan Center for Justice, MSNBC)