The Impostor Syndrome :: Gender Women Papers

The Impostor Syndrome Professor Martine Haas, Organizational Behavior, Cornell University, gave an example of a woman named Vignette who was giving presentations and had to monitor herself in a male dominated setting. She avoided raising her voice at certain times in order not to sound too assertive because she is a woman. Vignette hasn't been the only female or woman who has been faced with this situation. Aside from this type of impression management, there have been many circumstances where many successful women hesitate to take full credit for their success and accomplishments. They often feel insecure, attribute their accomplishments to something other than their own efforts such as luck and often get thrown into a state of paranoia that people will doubt their competency. This is known as the "imposter syndrome." Susan Schenkel, author of â€Å"Giving Away Success† says â€Å"there are many ways we discount ourselves. Three of the most common patterns are: 1) emphasizing the negative 2) automatically attributing success to something other than ability, and 3) automatically blaming failure on lack of ability† (Schenkel, 6). Schenkel explains how women also end up being susceptible to falling into helplessness as a result of uncontrollability, which is the belief that nothing can be done to rectify their current state of misfortunes. As a result they end up withdrawing, for example, stopping, quitting or escaping from making ardent efforts to deal with their existing problems. A second thing they tend to do is to avoid getting into tough situations. They do this by shying away from confrontation with the difficulty they feel unable or unwilling to handle (Schenkel, 19). As a result of this helplessness disrupts behavior such as undermining motivation, interfering with ability to l earn and creating emotional distress (Schenkel, p. 24). Another aspect of this imposter syndrome is fear of failure, where women sometimes get terrified of being judged and found unqualified (Schenkel, 55). When the fear of failure is combined with other behavioral patterns, a resulting consequence is anxiety. This is where women tend to have â€Å"split self-image† which is â€Å"an ongoing battle between positive and negative views of our ability† (Schenkel, 63). Secondly there is a superfluous desire and concern to win approval of others. Lastly, they tend to evaluate themselves and their experiences as either good or bad and with nothing in between (Schenkel, 65). In an attempt to prevent experiencing failure, women make cumbersome efforts to establish extremely high standards and goals for themselves and work indefatigably to meet them (Schenkel, 66).