On Rejection: Mahima Vashisht
A lovely chat with the author of Womaning In India
Hi friends,
Our interview series is back this week with an interview with Mahima Vashisht, the author of the amazing substack Womaning in India. I’m so excited to have her because the work she’s doing to highlight gender gaps is really important (and a little in line with what I was writing about just last week!) plus she’s just really empathetic and generous to boot.
If you’re just discovering Collected Rejections, welcome! You can subscribe to this newsletter right here:
Hi Mahima! Tell us about a time you experienced rejection.
There have been so many, it’s hard for me to pick one. One example that comes to my mind right now is the time I applied for two fellowship programs run by Substack for chosen writers. Substack would give selected writers mentorship and help and publishing support. But I got rejected for both of them. That would be the most recent example, but over the years I’ve had various forms of rejections. I mean, rejections in the workplace, rejections as a student, rejections in love… There are just too many to count. Life is about rejection and life is about acceptance of rejection.
How did you get over it?
I think my process of getting over rejection has many factors to it. For example, first of all, how important was this thing to me? How many of my hopes and dreams and future plans were hinging on this?
Another big factor has been my age (and therefore maturity) at the time of the rejection. The way I deal with rejection has changed dramatically over the years. When I was a student, I didn’t clear a competitive exam and it completely crushed me. I remember bawling my eyes out for a week straight. But over the years, as you grow and you experience more of life, you realize that life is very long and the world is very big – and there are so many opportunities in both. Nothing is really the end of the world as long as you’ve got your health and your loved ones.
Today, rejections – professional, writing, relationships, friendships – don’t faze me beyond a point. It is never the greatest news to be rejected, but once you have that perspective on how big the world is, and how insignificant your problems are – these things start hurting a little less. You learn to take them in your stride.
It is useful, also, to keep reminding ourselves that we are super privileged. If you are reading this, you likely have food, shelter, water, and some income to spare after taking care of all of your basic needs, and many of your wants. That puts us somewhere among the 1% most privileged people in the world. If we practice gratitude for all of this, it makes our rejections not feel like as big a deal, anymore.
As long as the process was fair and the outcome was fairly decided, I think you should be able to accept that one is not going to be the best at everything all the time. That is too high a standard to hold yourself up to. It is important to learn to forgive yourself and move on – something I struggle with myself but am trying to practice more and more as I grow older and (hopefully) wiser. There is always the next thing to move on to.
If you could go back and tell yourself anything right before that experience of rejection, what would you say?
If I could go back to my younger self—who would get very fazed by rejection—I would go back and tell her, “I know this seems big to you right now. It seems like an earth-shattering, life-ending rejection. But it is not. None of this is going to matter in the long run. As long as you learn a lesson from the rejection, it was not a waste. Practice gratitude and take heart. Life is a marathon, not a sprint.”
I’m curious about how rejection is treated in Indian culture—how are women in India socialized to handle putting themselves out there and/or rejection?
This is an interesting question for me, because – even as the writer of Womaning in India, a newsletter about gender - I had never thought of rejection in gendered terms before I started thinking about this question. So thank you for asking me this.
I think something that women across the world suffer from is severe imposter syndrome. Women undervalue themselves, underestimate themselves. The typical example I often use is that if a job opening comes out with a list of eligibility criteria, a man who meets 30% of the criteria will still apply for it thinking that he is the best guy for the job. And a woman who meets 95% of the criteria might say, “Oh but I don’t meet 100% so I am not eligible to apply for this job, so I won’t.” I think that is the biggest barrier for women – at which we get rejected just ourselves.
This imposter syndrome also leads to a more passive acceptance of rejection. It happens all the time. There is a glass ceiling, and men are sitting in the topmost offices in most professions. So yes, many men get selected for such positions over a woman who might have been more qualified for the role, because of all sorts of biases that exist around women in the workplace. This is a well-recognized and documented issue. And the other issue is also that these rejected women accept it too easily, and see it as a fair personal assessment, which it seldom is. Our own internalized misogyny can even make us accept on some level that a man could probably do the job better than us when the rational part of our brain knows that this is not true.
I have been saying through all my responses so far, “As long as the process is fair.” But the reality, when it comes to gender, is often not fair. This has happened to me too - I was the most suited person for a role, but a less qualified man was picked over me. At the time I was even told, “We went with this person because he is a man. We’re sorry, but a woman would have such-and-such logistical issues in this role. You were the best person for the job, but oops!”
The worst thing was that I took this in my stride and silently accepted the rejection, content with this acknowledgment that I was given on the sidelines! If I could talk to my younger self, I would also tell her to not accept such a rejection - to stand up and fight for myself and other women against a system that is so clearly rigged.
When it comes to women and rejection, we need to believe in ourselves a bit more and be our champions because no one else will do it for us. Put yourself out there a lot more. Don’t accept rejection if it’s unfair, and don’t let such a rejection influence our own opinion of ourselves. Don’t let a rigged rejection become a verdict that someone else has passed on our self-worth.
What are you working on now?
I’m currently writing Womaning in India, a weekly newsletter about gender issues. Every week, I write about a gender bias that women face that colours how we experience life – at home, at the workplace, in public spaces, and in our self-image. I use real stories of real women I interview to highlight gender biases that we all subconsciously carry and often don’t question. I love that my readers often write back to me saying that something I wrote made them question their mindsets and reflect on biases they didn’t know they even had.
The issues I write about are difficult and heavy, and so, my preferred writing style is to use humour and pop culture references to put my point across. I think the lightness of my writing makes it easier for my readers to swallow the bitter pill of reality that I am serving through these stories.
I’m also doing a number of talks with corporate and educational institutions addressing people on gender at the workplace and gender in our professional lives, and how we all carry these small biases in our heads, whether we are aware of them or not.
In the future, I want to convert Womaning in India into a book so that it can reach a lot more people. And while I am dreaming, let me dream big: I’d like my book to be translated into some local Indian languages as well, at least Hindi. If that happens, these important messages and stories would reach a lot more people.
You can follow Mahima on Twitter.
