Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
I often hear people trying to put a woman down by saying, “She’s better than you.” Most women respond with grace: “God bless her, I’m not in a competition.”
But have you ever wondered what happens when the roles are reversed? What if someone points to you and tells that same woman, “You’re better than her”?
Will she respond with the same calm certainty? Will she say, “God bless me, she’s not in a competition,” referring to you? Or will she let the sentence linger, flattering and quietly affirming something she didn’t ask for but doesn’t mind receiving?
Let’s not reach for the answer we’d post publicly. Let’s instead speak the answer that arrives first, before self-censorship rushes in to clean it up.
The comparison game
Like it or not, we’ve all been compared, not once or twice but over and over again; sometimes as the one who falls short, sometimes as the one who is presented as superior.
For women, comparison isn’t just an abstract idea. It’s a lifelong condition.
We’re compared based on our faces before we’re old enough to understand what beauty costs; on our bodies before we learn they aren’t public property; on how loudly we speak or how carefully we don’t; on whether we are too much or not enough, sometimes in the same breath.
We’re compared in love: Who gets chosen, who gets left behind, who waited too long, who settled too soon.
We’re compared at work: Who climbs the ladder, who pauses, who’s “ambitious”, who’s “difficult”.
And just when we think we’ve outgrown it, the judging shifts, and it becomes about our children: How early they speak, how well they perform, which school accepts them, which country they go to for university, how far they travel from home to prove they are “successful”.
Women are compared even for things they never chose, like the family they were born into or the city where they grew up.
Let me be clear. I’m uncomfortable with comparisons, not because I always lose but because I don’t want to win this game at all.
People like to say comparison is human, and they’re right. We look sideways to make sure we’re living life “correctly”. We scan the room, the feed, the group chat, silently asking, “Am I late? Am I early? Am I behind?”
This instinct is ancient. It once kept us alive.
But instinct shouldn’t become an excuse, because comparisons have a way of stealing joy without our being aware. We can be genuinely content with what we have. That is, until we see someone else’s version. Suddenly, what once felt whole begins to feel small.
We were fine with our progress, until we saw someone else’s promotions. We were at peace in our relationship, until we saw someone else’s engagement photos.
Nothing actually changes except our point of reference. Nothing is taken away except our ability to stay present in our own lives.
The fantasy of opting out
So, should we try to ignore comparison altogether?
It’s a fantasy we tell ourselves to feel morally superior, but we can’t unlearn a reflex just by disapproving it.
What we can do is choose the kind of participant we want to be when comparison enters the room.
I’m not always comfortable when someone compares me favorably. But also, I’m not always brave. Sometimes I let it happen. Sometimes I accept the warmth of being chosen. Sometimes I stay quiet, because correcting the moment might cost me something: approval, ease, the pleasure of being seen as “better”.
It’s easy to reject comparison when it hurts, but what about when it rewards us? When someone else is made smaller so we can be praised? When no one explicitly asks for our agreement but our silence serves as consent?
That silence isn’t humility. It’s a strategy to pretend we have no strengths.
As women, we’re often placed in quiet competitions we never signed up for, ranked against friends, colleagues, sisters, even strangers, and taught to accept these rankings as natural, even harmless.
But they’re neither. These invisible, insidious competitions convince us that admiration is limited and space is scarce; that for one of us to rise, another must fall. And once we internalize that logic, it becomes much harder to reject a comparison that puts us on the higher step.
But rejecting even favorable comparisons matters: To remind ourselves that human lives are not scoreboards, that context matters, that effort isn’t distributed evenly.
Above all, it is to remind ourselves that not everyone wants the same things or carries the same weight.
Even when the outcomes look similar, the journeys rarely are. So when someone says, “You’re better than her”, we’re standing at a quiet crossroads.
We can let the sentence pass, unchanged, or we can ask why comparison was necessary in the first place.
We don’t need a lecture. Sometimes just a pause is enough; a moment of discomfort; a reminder that admiration doesn’t require hierarchy.
What if we’re the ones comparing?
The most persistent kind of comparison is internal, the kind we run silently, without witness or referee.
It’s true: We sometimes compare ourselves to other women. But more often, we compare ourselves to past versions of who we were or to imagined versions of who we should be: the version who never gets tired, never needs help, never doubts, never changes her mind.
The wildest part? This self-comparison often comes in the guise of self-motivation. It convinces us: “If I can measure up, I can feel safe,” or “If I can just be better, I’ll finally relax.”
But it doesn’t work that way. The finish line keeps moving; the standards multiply. We become a project that’s never allowed to be completed.
Self-comparison borrows the language of growth, but it runs on the logic of punishment. It rarely says, “I want to improve because I love my life.” Instead, it usually says, “I must improve so I can stop feeling uneasy.” That’s why it never ends.
It’s also unfair. We compare our current selves, tired, busy, doing the best we can, to a fantasy self who has no limits. We compare a full, complicated human life to a perfect weekly planner, and then we call the result “discipline”.
Maybe the better question isn’t “How do I stop comparing myself?” but “What is this comparison trying to protect me from?”
Sometimes it’s fear of being left behind; sometimes it’s fear of being ordinary. And sometimes it’s fear that resting is laziness and softness is weakness.
When we can name the fear, the comparison starts to lose its grip.
Can comparison ever be good?
Yes. Actually, it can. Sometimes comparison sparks learning. It reveals possibility. It shows us a path we didn’t know existed.
When we see another woman and feel something complicated, like admiration mixed with envy or inspiration mixed with discomfort, it’s not proof that we’re bad people. It’s a sign that we’re awake to our own longing.
Maybe we don’t want her life. Maybe what we want is what her life represents: freedom, recognition, artistry, ease, stability, peace.
The problem isn’t noticing another woman’s success. The problem is believing that it somehow subtracts from ours.
A healthy comparison doesn’t say, “She has it, so I can’t,” it says: “She has it, so maybe I can, too.” Only then does that woman stop being a rival and become a model to aspire to.
This kind of comparison takes courage. It asks us to admit what we want without shaming ourselves for wanting it.
If comparison is going to show up anyway, let’s at least make it useful. Let it expand our sense of what’s possible without shrinking our sense of what’s enough.
