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" Do women have a problem with confidence? The cover story in The Atlantic this week claims that it&amp;#039;s not just a problem, but a &amp;quot;Confidence Gap.&amp;quot; Authors Claire Shipman, a reporter for ABC News, and Katty Kay, the anchor of BBC World News America, have spent their careers interviewing important people. When they compared notes and realized how many influential women were reluctant to praise their own accomplishments, they noticed an alarming trend: &amp;quot;The power centers of this nation are zones of female self-doubt \u2014 that is, when they include women at all,&amp;quot; they write in the piece. They set out to interview even more influential women to see if the trend had reach. Tech entrepreneur Clara Shih told them she felt &amp;quot;like an imposter&amp;quot; at her high level of success in Silicon Valley. All-Star WNBA player Monique Currie confessed that all male players exude confidence \u2014 even the ones on the bench \u2014 but for women, &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s not like that.&amp;quot; Men don&amp;#039;t seem to have this problem. You don&amp;#039;t have to ask Richard Branson how he feels about his success, because he&amp;#039;s starring in his own commercials about it. Jerry Seinfeld&amp;#039;s Internet show, &amp;quot;Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,&amp;quot; might as well be called &amp;quot;Bragging With Friends,&amp;quot; because that&amp;#039;s what he and his mostly male lineup of super-famous guests seem to do all day. Even with Sheryl Sandberg&amp;#039;s Lean In, now an official part of the zeitgeist, many women aren&amp;#039;t yet taking that next step to tout their legit merits. And this reluctance to self-promote extends to our rich and famous folks too. Sometimes even the most successful women in the world have a hard time giving themselves the credit they deserve. After she was already a huge movie star, Katharine Hepburn shrugged off her career as little more than acceptable: &amp;quot;I think I could have amounted to something that would have interested me more than what I&amp;#039;ve amounted to.&amp;quot; Here are eight other hugely successful women not quite taking the proper credit for what they&amp;#039;ve accomplished. 1. Anna Wintour: &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think of myself as a powerful person.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m sorry, what? Pop culture may cite her Devil Wears Prada image of icy cool too often, but Wintour&amp;#039;s power is real. She is the editor-in-chief of Vogue and the artistic director of the entire Cond\u00E9 Nast empire, a reach of influence that extends well beyond Fashion Week. To wit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art is naming an entire wing after her. 2. J.K. Rowling: &amp;quot;I never wanted [fame] and I never expected it and certainly didn&amp;#039;t work for it and I see it as something that I have to get through, really.&amp;quot; Of course she couldn&amp;#039;t have known the influence her imagination would have on the world when she wrote that first Harry Potter book. But almost immediately, it was clear that this woman was going to change publishing. And she did. 3. Joan Rivers: &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t believe that there&amp;#039;ll ever be another job.&amp;quot; Rivers has undeniably had some hard knocks in her career. The 49-year ban from The Tonight Show issued by a bitter Johnny Carson (and only just lifted by her appearance on Jimmy Fallon&amp;#039;s debut episode) caused her to struggle for work and search for feelings of self-worth. But Rivers&amp;#039;s influence on comedy is undeniable. Kathy Griffin, Sarah Silverman, and Louis C.K. have all cited her importance to their careers. The &amp;quot;Queen of Comedy&amp;quot; made TIME&amp;#039;s list of most influential people in 2013 for good reason: She&amp;#039;s 80 and still one of the most outrageous comics in the business. 4. Meryl Streep: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not anything that&amp;#039;s valuable,&amp;quot; the Oscar winner said of her reputation. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m just an actor. That&amp;#039;s all.&amp;quot; No, ma&amp;#039;am, you&amp;#039;re Meryl Streep. Enough. Said. 5. Gloria Steinem: &amp;quot;I suppose I think of myself mainly as an organizer and as someone who describes possibilities.&amp;quot; The leader of the Second Wave Feminist Movement is not short on confidence, something she encourages other women to embrace. But even today, at 80, she&amp;#039;s unwilling to take credit for her marching/organizing/writing that had a direct impact on changing millions of women&amp;#039;s lives. Hat tip, Gloria. 6. Jennifer Lawrence: &amp;quot;Everybody&amp;#039;s like, &amp;#039;How can you remain with a level head?&amp;#039; And I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;#039;Why would I ever get cocky? I&amp;#039;m not saving anybody&amp;#039;s life. There are doctors who save lives and firemen who run into burning buildings. I&amp;#039;m making movies. It&amp;#039;s stupid.&amp;quot; When you&amp;#039;re embodying roles that give little girls strong, moral heroes, when you&amp;#039;re throwing down dramatic performances that earn you a front-row seat to the Oscars every year, and when you fight to represent a realistic body image and make magazines apologize for Photoshopping you, it&amp;#039;s not stupid at all, J-Law. 7. Drew Gilpin Faust: When asked about becoming the first female president of Harvard, she relented, &amp;quot;Things sort of happened.&amp;quot; Or maybe she went to Bryn Mawr because Princeton didn&amp;#039;t accept female students at the time, then went on to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, became an award-winning scholar and an even more decorated author for her books on women&amp;#039;s roles during the Civil War (the last of which was a finalist for the Pulitzer), became the first dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and made history as the first president of Harvard to not be a Harvard alum \u2014 or a man.  8. Oprah Winfrey: &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think of myself as a businesswoman. There&amp;#039;s this part of me that&amp;#039;s afraid of what will happen if I believe it all.&amp;quot; Wait. The first African-American female billionaire, who personifies the personal brand as success platform, who uses her power to build schools and start networks and influence Hollywood, is unsure of the fact that she practically runs the world? Oprah, you&amp;#039;re freaking Oprah! RELATED: Cosmo Special Report: The Ambition Gap Why You Feel Like a Fraud at Work The 31 Best Pieces of Career Advice for Young Women Follow Heather on Twitter. Photo credit: Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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