While acknowledging the research that suggests that women approach their education with lower levels of self-confidence than men, this paper raises fundamental questions about how self-confidence has been described and measured during the last two decades. The validity of work on women's attitudes toward academic success is shown to be undercut by sex biases in research methodology and in the whole nature of the educational enterprise. Women show less interest, historically and physically, in the maintenance of the current academic structures such as competitive grading systems, inflexible and timed examinations, and the division of courses into ever smaller units organized around a rigid system of tests and rewards. Women's increasing rate of entry into post secondary education is a contradiction that needs further exploration. Using an overview of the literature and some preliminary results of a research project applying feminist pedagogy in the classroom, the paper explores reasons for instituting a feminist critique of the ideology of self-confidence, particularly as it relates to higher education in the sciences. (Author/CK)