The Hidden Value We Are Taught Not to See
How our systems teach us to dismiss our value
About 15 years ago, in a focus group in rural Myanmar, a young woman said something I still think about often.
Her words?
“I know my mother has a value, I am just not sure what it is.”
She wasn’t being mean or cruel - she knew that what she had been taught about the world was not true, but had not found the information to help her make sense of her experience of it.
To me, those words speak not only for the girl and her mother, but for all of us who have taken on (or been pushed into) roles which are not valued by dominant systems and power structures. The parts of us which can be easily dismissed or hidden. Even though we are here - with our unwavering value.
I think about this girl when I read studies about care work, which is primarily carried out by women, and is underpaid and undervalued across societies and cultures. I think about her when I see how our value diminishes in all the ways we do not fit the status quo. How our differences can make us easy to dismiss or trivialise.
I think about her when I think about the ways we are taught to diminish the full expression of being human - our emotionality, our softness, our rough edges. I think about her when I think about all the women whose efforts and love are dismissed as trivial or unimportant by our overculture.
And I think about her in the way that I assign value, consciously or subconsciously, to my own skills and capabilities. In the ways I make assumptions about what is valuable in me.
In my current job search, following the advice of career advisors, I write about my 20 years of experience through the lens of what I think each faceless HR team will consider valuable.
Yet, while I exist without a job, I am aware of how that value is, day to day, less demonstrable.
But, since I stopped going into an office, I have worked on a range of curious and creative skills. I have taught myself to dive in the small pool in my apartment complex. I have learned to swing from hoops and monkey bars. I have improved my Gaelic and Portuguese language skills. I have learned about the stock market (yup I know my ETFs from my Index Funds). I have hosted live interviews on Substack (new podcast here). I have taken photos of hidden street corners across Dubai. And I have also done the processing work of transition and change, the silent tending, the unpacking and repacking of life.
Whether directly relevant to my career or not, these skills add value to how I experience life and become woven into the tapestry of who I am.
Recruiters often send me automated replies telling me my skills did not match a role, when I know that statement is untrue. Equally, I know there is always a story, assigning logic to the decision to see value in what I might offer.
I am struck by how these structures are often how we assign ourselves value, by what we can bring to organisations, when really, our value takes many unassigned forms, which can also often be invisible to our own assessments.
As I was writing this essay, I started watching a show on Netflix, ‘North Of North’, set in an Inuk community in Canada. In the first episode, the main character is also trying to find a job. When told by a local administrator that she has no work experience or leadership skills, she blurts out:
“But I see life and beauty everywhere.”
And in her words, I was reminded of the girl from Myanmar and her mother.
I imagined a world where we were sought out and seen for all of our rich, unquantifiable selves. All of the human-ness we bring to work, to friendships, to walking down the road.
It made me want to write a CV, where I record all of my unstated and hidden worth. The types of self-specifics that I don’t usually record in bullet points.
Like my ability to make my colleagues laugh at least 3 times a day, the determination and cracked hands that brought me my new monkey bar swinging skills, or the layers of insight I learned recovering from abuse and trauma in a world which doesn’t much understand what that means.
Or my capacity to treasure words spoken by young women in remote villages 15 years ago. To find value in what I have been taught as having no value.
To, despite all the hard moments, see beauty in all things.
Friends,
It is a week of transition and change for me, as I am in the process of moving out of Dubai. But I found 5 minutes to edit this essay I started a few months back, so I thought it would be an interesting topic to share and discuss together.
I would love to know:
What talents would you add to your CV if workplaces valued more of us, all of us, the hidden skills that make our lives worthwhile?
What skills do you wish our societies assigned greater recognition and value to?
What hidden skills do you have that you often forget about?
Like, share, subscribe and join the chat.
And if you want to support me writing as I travel, buy me a coffee for the road.
Till next week, seeing the hidden value in all of us,
Catriona
In case you missed it:
Job hunting is tough. Too often, candidates are met with silence, automated replies, or disregard. It hurts.
AI screening systems leave little room for atypical profiles or for showing your true value beyond the lines of a CV.
I truly hope that in the future, hobbies, creativity, and soft skills will be recognized and valued more—and that genuine human connection with recruiters will be possible again.
Wishing you the best of luck in your search!
Write that CV - if only for yourself! We all have so many qualities not valued by an HR proforma. Making people laugh, feel seen, try something new. Noticing lack, adding colour...