You Are Not an Imposter

Schools Out!

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As the academic year comes to a close, it’s time for many graduates to think about what comes next. And for many young women, there will be a moment when they pause, and wonder, am I really qualified for that job? Am I really expert enough for that opportunity? For those entering graduate school or new jobs in the academy, writing blocks may appear on their road to finishing theses, dissertations, journal articles, or books.

There is a name for such insecurity, and it is imposter syndrome, defined as a persistent doubt that one’s success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one’s efforts or skills. And gender matters when it comes to feeling like an imposter. Women report doubting their professional ability or achievements more often than men. But it’s not just women who struggle with imposter syndrome; more than a third of men do as well.

So who struggles, and why? And what can we do about it? Let me be clear, this is not a mental health diagnosis. It’s a social problem. As a sociologist, I can explain what is happening.

It is still unfortunately true that in many households, girls and boys are raised differently. Parents dress boys in clothes that allow them to be active and get dirty, while girls' clothes restrict activity. Boys are allowed to be loud, while girls are told to be polite. This hidden curriculum begins in pre-school, and shapes who we are as men and women. Boys are encouraged to be aggressive, and competitive, girls to be nice and empathic. While this may be changing, research suggests change is not happening very fast. Girls are no longer raised to be homemakers as their only career, but they are still raised to be nurturing, and so may seek careers in paid caretaking, from nursing to teaching, to medicine. But they are not raised to fight for success, to be competitive. Boys, at least those from economically advantaged families, are raised to be thought leaders, movers, and shakers. So is it surprising that women are more insecure about their success?

Of course, some men also report imposter syndrome. From decades of experience as a professor and as a writing coach, I can tell you which men are most likely to worry that they do not deserve their own professional success: those raised without the expectation that they would become our society’s next generation of leaders, men raised in economically under-privileged homes, often from marginalized racial and ethnic groups. These are men who succeeded despite our societal presumptions that leadership resides naturally in elite white men.

I can provide some examples from my own life. When I was a visiting fellow at an elite university that annually brought in a cohort of visiting scholars for the privilege of spending the year writing without distractions, some of us created a writing group. We realized, toward the end of our time together, that we had created our group because we all had some version of imposter syndrome, some disbelief we had been chosen for this opportunity from scholars across the globe. One day I looked around and realized we were all women, men of color, or from the LGBTQ community. We were all people who hadn’t been expected to rise to the top of our profession. We were here, but we were still insecure. We were not unique.

As a faculty member who teaches doctoral students about writing, and runs workshops on writing for faculty at universities across the globe, I’ve noticed that the people who most frequently complain of one academic version of imposter syndrome, writer’s block, are women and men of color. Over many decades, I have learned that most fear being judged by what they write. Because if you never take the chance to share your thoughts, no one can ever find out that you just might be an imposter. I try to help my clients and students understand that their fear of failure, of being “found out” has nothing to do with their skill set, and everything to do with the assumptions our society has made about people in their demographic group. Gender matters! Women are not expected to be at the top, or even near the glass ceiling. But women are not alone. Women’s experiences are quite similar to men who grew up economically underprivileged, and in marginalized ethnic and racial groups.

People who do well professionally, despite not having been raised to be movers and shakers, probably have more drive and ambition than those who were expected to take over the leadership reins in our society. This is a lesson we need to reiterate to every new graduate now going on the job market. Don’t let those societal stereotypes about your demographic group hold you back from shooting for your dream job. You are not an imposter even if you are exceeding the expectations some may have had for you. Go for it.