A common sensation experienced especially in the work environment, the Imposter Syndrome, is an ever too common feeling shared especially amongst women. Defined as “the feeling that your achievements are not real or that you do not deserve praise or success” by the Cambridge Dictionary, this feeling is especially prevalent amongst white women, women of colour, and the LGBTQ+ community, according to psychotherapist Brian Daniel Norton. This is due to the fact that the aforementioned groups experience systemic oppression and are socialized into thinking that they are less worthy than their male counterparts, as well as experience real discrimination and lack significant role models due to a historically male-dominated workplace.
All these facts and reasons too often leave women doubting their own abilities, qualifications and skills to the point that this affects the necessary confidence and self-assurance to that might hinder their achievements and performance in the professional workplace. Unfortunately, it also affects our mental health, self-esteem, self-value and perception, which consequently, also have an impact in other aspects of our lives.
It is not enough to be told that you are brilliant, sufficiently skilled, or qualified when your whole life you’ve been treated like a second-class citizen. Ideally, there would be a profound reform in the system that would once and for all stop a male-dominated environment both in the workplace and private life, but, as we know, these systematic changes can be slow and complicated, so what should we do until we achieve this much-needed utopia?
Well, we can start by looking at some plain facts and data to set the record straight. Recent studies have shown that women can be inherently better leaders than men. Marts and Keitt (2004) identified key traits that are necessary in order to become a successful leader, and, it turns out, that the women in the study scored higher than men. The five key traits are emotional stability, extraversion, openness to new experiences, agreeableness and conscientiousness, and the women in the study showed higher scores in four out of the five traits than their male counterparts (Criado Perez, 2021).
These results are not found in isolation, since research has shown that female-run businesses produce more than twice the revenue than those run by men. These results are discussed in Caroline Criado Perez’s book Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. She mentions the previous studies and results in connection with the fact that women receive significantly less revenue when pitching for new business than men, yet manage to perform economically better (Criado Perez, 2021).
Some of you may ask that if this is the case, and there’s evidence of this, why women should still continue to feel inadequate and why would female businesses do not receive the support they deserve? Well, as I mentioned above, women feel inadequate due to the socialization we have received which seems to be deeply engraved in our brains and leave up to 75% of successful female leaders and executives feeling inadequate or unworthy of their achievements (KPMG Study Finds 75% of Executive Women Experience Imposter Syndrome, 1970).
This is unfortunately connected and backed by the fact that for every 100 men who get promoted to manager, only 72 women do so, and that 62% of men have 62% of manager positions in relation to women who just hold 38% (Women in the Workplace 2019: The State of Women in Corporate America, 2019).
I don’t know about you, but while thinking about and writing this, I just feel like throwing my hands up high and screaming “What the hell is going on?”.
Honestly, I feel a bit silly writing about how women are just as worthy of respect as men in the workplace, and how we can be just as good or even better leaders than our male colleagues, because for me, and luckily many other people, it is obvious, yet there seems to still be a significant lack of this basic acknowledgment going around that gives place to the unequal figures I have quoted above.
So, what are we to do in the face of blatant dismissal of our abilities and an evident bias in favour of men in general? I honestly don’t have an answer and a set-in-stone solution for this. I have to admit that I too often experience a sensation of frustration and desperation. But then these feelings also make want to jump up and remind my girlfriends and myself of this information and bang into our heads the belief that we are just as worthy as Anthony or Simon or Carlos from our office and why should we not also apply for that promotion or that job that we might not feel we’re 100% qualified for yet we would still like to give it a try?!
Ladies, we are just as fit for the jobs, or might even be better for them. Let’s not let hundreds of years of brainwashing get to us and let’s just go for that job. We have the scientific evidence that shows that we are actually, inherently, built to be successful leaders, so let’s engrave that data in our brain, repeat it like a mantra until we believe it and take that opportunity.
References
Keitt, S. K., Fagan, T. F., & Marts, S. A. (2004). Understanding sex differences in environmental health: a thought leaders’ roundtable. Environmental Health Perspectives, 112(5), 604–609. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.6714
KPMG study finds 75% of executive women experience imposter syndrome. (1970, August 22). Info.Kpmg.Us. https://info.kpmg.us/news-perspectives/people-culture/kpmg-study-finds-most-female-executives-experience-imposter-syndrome.html
Perez, C. C. (2021). Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. Harry N. Abrams.
Women in the Workplace 2019: The State of Women in Corporate America. (2019). Lean In. https://leanin.org/women-in-the-workplace-2019
