Confidence & Identity | BusinessOwning Your Space When You’re the Only Woman in the Room
Author: Isabel Polanco | Published: November 2025
“You belong in every space you choose to walk into. You do not need a different title to prove it. Your differences are often the very things that make you unforgettable.”
A Reflection on Confidence, Identity, and Showing up as Yourself
The moment I realised I was the only woman in a steering group meeting, something shifted. It wasn’t because I felt out of place or questioned my right to be there. It was because it reminded me how often women hold themselves back long before anyone else has the chance to. I didn’t focus on gender or hierarchy. I found myself thinking about confidence and the subtle ways we learn to shrink it.
The Weight of a Title
When I began consulting, I resisted calling myself a “Consultant.” The word felt heavy and almost clinical. It carried an expectation of flawless expertise that I wasn’t convinced I possessed, so I avoided it. Instead, I introduced myself as a Project or Programme Manager, roles that felt more natural, relational and human. Interestingly, people responded differently. Conversations opened up, relationships built faster, and the work flowed.
“Being Black, being an immigrant, having an accent, coming from a different educational or cultural background. These experiences can feel like barriers, yet more often they are strengths we underestimate.”
That experience taught me something I have carried throughout my career: confidence does not come from the title you choose. It comes from how you show up.
The Quiet Fears We Don’t Speak About
Like many women entering male-dominated spaces, I carried doubts I never voiced out loud. My accent. My education. The assumption that everyone else in the room knew more than I did. With time, I realised something far more important. What moves you forward is not your background or where you studied. It is your attitude, your consistency, your curiosity, your willingness to network, listen, adapt and keep going even when the inner critic is loud. None of the fears I carried ever truly limited me. Only believing them did.
What Makes Us Different Makes Us Powerful
Conversations with women like Alyx Jordan remind me how many of us carry “identity anxieties.”: being Black, being an immigrant, having an accent, coming from a different educational or cultural background. These experiences can feel like barriers, yet more often they are strengths we underestimate. They shape the way we connect. They deepen the way we lead. They give us perspectives others do not have. Our identity is not a liability. It is a superpower many of us are still learning to claim.
Confidence Is Something You Build
I spent years waiting to feel ready. Ready to take up space, ready to speak up, ready to claim expertise. Eventually I realised that nobody taps you on the shoulder to certify your belonging. Confidence grows through action, not permission. You show up before you feel ready. You speak even if your voice shakes a little. You walk into the room even if you are the only one like you there. And with time, something beautiful happens: it becomes second nature.
Why This Matters
If I had read a story like this years ago, I would have stepped forward sooner and without apologising for who I was or where I came from. So this is for any woman who hesitates because of her accent or background, tiptoes around certain titles, questions whether she is enough to sit at certain tables, or finds herself being the only woman or the only anything in the room, Here’s your reminder:
“You belong in every space you choose to walk into. You do not need a different title to prove it. Your differences are often the very things that make you unforgettable.”
A Final Word
I am grateful for platforms like The Ivy Group, spaces created by women for women, celebrating stories that do not always get told. If even one woman reads this and decides to trust her voice a little more boldly, then sharing it is absolutely worth it.
Isabel Polanco is a Founder, Director and Digital Transformation Leader and Founder of GR8 Consultants UK, with deep experience delivering large-scale programmes across UK government and the public sector.