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Do you feel like you don’t deserve your success? Do you feel like you have to accumulate degrees and certifications to feel legitimate in your career? It’s possible that you’re suffering from imposter syndrome, especially if you’re a woman.
Theorized in the late 1970s by American psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, the imposter complex is a self-perpetuating feeling of doubt and questioning. People who suffer from it believe that they are not qualified enough to deserve their academic or professional success. They attribute their success more to external factors such as luck, rather than to their own talent.
This feeling of fraud is likely to affect 70% of the world’s population at some point in their lives, according to a study published in 2011 in the Journal of Behavioral Science. But a meta-analysispublished in Current Research in Behavioral Sciences, claims that women are more likely to experience imposter complex than men.
The authors of this research came to this conclusion after studying the findings of about a hundred studies on the subject involving, in total, no less than 40,000 participants. They found that women, who constitute 58% of the group of subjects, obtain higher scores than men on the different scales measuring the imposter complex.Based on this analysis, we believe that an appropriate answer to the question of whether there is a gender difference in imposter syndrome is ‘yes’. There appear to be some exceptions to this general rule, but they are not numerous.“, the researchers write in their study.
Feeling good in your body, feeling good in your head!
The weight of stereotypes
The research team does not discuss the reasons that lead women to doubt their abilities, but previous studies claim that this phenomenon can be explained by structural and societal reasons. The lack of confidence in women is apparently fueled by the belief that cognitive and intellectual performance are, by nature, different between the sexes. This misconception, which has no scientific basis, is so widespread that young children unconsciously adhere to it. Indeed, American researchers have found that gender stereotypes are internalized by the age of 6. Girls of this age are less likely to consider women to be “very very intelligent” than boys of the same age for men, as indicated by their studypublished in 2017 in the journal Science. As adults, these stereotypes can discourage women from pursuing careers in sectors considered masculine, including science.
Contrary to what its name suggests, imposter syndrome is not an illness. It is a feeling of psychological discomfort that can lead to a state of chronic dissatisfaction, procrastination and self-sabotage strategies, anxiety and sometimes even depression. But fortunately, it is entirely possible to learn to reclaim your successes and stop doubting yourself, without falling into overconfidence.
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