I want to be clear: I’m not trying to hijack the societal pressure on women to see themselves as lesser-than men.
No problem, I didn’t think you were trying to do what I speculated about.
That’s real, and it’s insidious and horrible. I’ve witnessed it first hand in so many contexts and fight against it wherever and whenever I can.
Indeed!
I do believe it is separate from imposter syndrome, which, as I understand the term, is an internalized feeling that tends to manifest in people with a deep enough understanding of the world, or at least their field of expertise, to know just how much they do not know. It has no socioeconomic baggage in my mind.
Hmm, that’s an interestingly, commonly masculine perspective, it seems to me. Ironically so, if what I understand about the term is true — that the concept of “imposter phenomenon” initially came about to describe something that often happens to women. As this overview says, two researchers who were women coined the term in a “1978 study on high-achieving women who felt as though their success was not attributed to their own abilities.”
As the abstract of the study itself says, “The term impostor phenomenon is used to designate an internal experience of intellectual phonies, which appears to be particularly prevalent and intense among a select sample of high achieving women. Certain early family dynamics and later introjection of societal sex-role stereotyping appear to contribute significantly to the development of the impostor phenomenon.”
People exhibiting impostor syndrome (it’s not a condition, per se, but a behavior that anyone could exhibit) are often understate their assertions and downplay their competence.
I wouldn’t say it’s a behavior so much as a feeling, and a set of self-doubting thoughts provoked by it, but anyway, the “internalized doubts” you also mention certainly can be caused by external factors, such as the decidedly toxic masculinity of society and the workplace.
I hope that makes my earlier post more clear? That I empathize with women who might not only deal with internalized doubts of their own competence but also have that societal pressure telling them that, no matter how freaking amazing they are, it’s never good enough.
Sure, thanks for the further effort to clarify, and Iappreciateas always your empathy. I’ll just say again, though, that I think internalized doubts in women (as in people who aren’t, say, white) can be caused by societal pressure telling them they’re never good enough. I don’t see a reason for separating them as you’re doing, nor do the people who came up with and studied the “imposter” concept in the first place.
Overcoming toxic masculinity is one part of the solution to the problem; making sure women are recognized for their achievements and competence, and that their voices are heard, is another part.
Hear hear! And if they are heard, and respected, and accorded genuinely equal treatment, they’re also that much less likely to succumb to imposter syndrome, a phenomenon that they, as women, are more likely to suffer from than men.
(By the way, I’ve had no trouble finding corroborating arguments for my understanding that “imposter syndrome has an outsize effect on certain groups.”)
