If researchers looking at children are right, males may have simply grown up learning to take females less seriously. In play pairs, even among children as young as two and a half, boys pay attention to protests from other boys. But when girls tell boys to stop doing something, the boys ignore them.9 Fast-forward a few years and even on what researchers had set up as a collaborative science project, the experience of being the only boy differed dramatically from that of the lone girl. When teams consisted of three girls and one boy, the girls deferred to the boy, who spoke twice as much as all the girls combined. But when the situation was reversed, the boys ignored and insulted the lone girl.10 Jump ahead to adulthood and this pattern continues. Midlevel women in high-tech describe their largely male work environment to be so “competitive and unfriendly” that it requires “a concerted effort to be assertive in order to be heard.”11
Naturally, everyone wants to feel heard. It’s likely, though, that for you feeling heard matters even more. If you’ve ever sat in a classroom or meeting and felt your contributions were ignored, you won’t be surprised to learn that when female students feel their questions are dismissed by professors, their self-confidence declines; conversely, feeling heard boosts women’s confidence.12
You don’t have to convince United States Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that feeling heard matters. Speaking of her experience as a female attorney in the sixties and seventies, Ginsburg told USA Today, “I don’t know how many meetings I attended … where I would say something, and I thought it was a pretty good idea … Then somebody else would say exactly what I said. Then people would become alert to it, respond to it.” Three decades later Ginsburg admits that there are times when the lack of diversity on the high court can still be wearying. “It can happen even in the conferences in the court. When I will say something … it isn’t until somebody else says it that everyone will focus on the point,” said Ginsburg.13
When you feel like an impostor, you’re prone to undervalue yourself. Widen the lens a bit and the question becomes, how could you not? As more women enter a field, the pay scale drops and so does the job’s status. And when you live in a society where money and status are revered, having less of both only reinforces the perception that the work you do is not as highly valued—at least not when a woman does it. Miami Herald humor columnist Dave Barry raised this point when he suggested, “The obvious and fair solution to the housework problem is to let men do the housework for, say, the next six thousand years, to even things up.” Joking that “the trouble is that men, over the years, have developed an inflated notion of the importance of everything they do, so that before long they would turn housework into just as much of a charade as business is now. They would hire secretaries and buy computers and fly off to housework conferences in Bermuda, but they’d never clean anything.”14
It’s easy to smile at the truth in Barry’s joke. But it’s no laughing matter when your job is the one routinely made smaller. Just ask former Clinton White House staffer Dee Dee Myers. In her book Why Women Should Rule the World, Myers offers a revealing look at the subtle and not-so-subtle ways women are rendered less important. She tells of the intense pressure then president-elect Bill Clinton was under to make good on his promise to create a government that “looked like America.” Unfortunately, his initial appointments looked like more of the same. That’s when insiders hatched a plan to appoint Myers to be the first female White House press secretary—kind of. Myers got the news from transition-team members George Stephanopoulos and Ricki Seidman. I’ll let Myers take it from here:
“[They told me] I would have the title of White House press secretary. But the job would be a little different. George would be director of communications; he would handle the daily briefings, as he had during the transition, and I would be the backup briefer. He would take the press secretary’s office in the West Wing; I’d have a smaller office in the same suite. He’d carry the highest rank of assistant to the president (as all previous press secretaries had); I’d be a deputy assistant—a lower rank that came with a smaller salary (natch).” Of the offer, Myers says, “Suddenly, I found myself staring down the barrel of a predicament that I knew was all too common among women: responsibility without corresponding authority.”
Once in the White House, Myers had the lesson reinforced. It turned out that despite having less responsibility, a deputy in another office was making ten thousand dollars more a year than she was. So Myers went to chief of staff Leon Panetta to straighten out what she presumed to be a simple and easily remedied oversight. Instead Panetta explained that the other guy had taken a pay cut to work for the president, there was no money in the budget for a raise (we’re talking eight hundred dollars a week here, folks), and besides, he had a family and she didn’t. When Myers tried to press her case, Panetta abruptly ended the meeting with “It’s not going to happen.”
You don’t have to be especially motivated by power or money to recognize the diminishing effect such experiences can have on a woman. Myers writes, “The president and the senior staff made the job less important than it had been. And that made me less important.”
Connecting the Dots to Your Life
If you’ve been selling yourself short, it may be because the world you live in does too. To begin to connect the dots, look for instances in your own life when you have felt ignored, trivialized, or otherwise taken less seriously. Instances when you had to work harder for your voice to be heard and/or ways you may have been devalued financially. Do you see possible connections between these external realities and your internal struggle to feel competent and deserving?
Even when you understand the larger social landscape, you can’t control what other people think or do. There are, however, things you can do to mitigate certain situations or at least be mindful of. Take showing anger at work. You can still get riled if you want, but at least be aware that doing so puts you at risk of being seen as less competent. Know too that when women explain why they are angry, researchers found people more apt to cut them slack, whereas they are less forgiving of men who do the same because offering reasons for their emotions is considered a sign of weakness.
It really is harder to take yourself seriously when the people around you don’t. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have a role here. Remember how the one boy in the science-project group spoke twice as much as all three girls combined? We’ve all run into men who hog the stage—but who lets them? If you don’t feel heard, pay attention to how you may contribute to this dynamic: Do you use the more traditionally female mode of communication, which is to defer and wait your turn? That’s fine to do when the stakes are low. But there are situations where in order to be heard you have to forgo the usual rules, starting with the belief that you always have to follow the rules.
It’s not enough, for example, to raise your hand. You have to keep it raised, even if it means not doing what you’re told—a lesson Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says she learned, ironically after delivering a speech to employees on why there are so few female leaders. Shortly after her talk Sandberg was approached by a young woman who said her big take-away was that she needed to keep her hand up. The employee went on to explain that after her talk Sandberg said she would take two more questions. Once she did, the employee put her hand down and noticed that all the other women put their hands down too, only to watch as Sandberg continued to take more questions—all from men who kept their hands up.
If you want to be heard, you’re going to have to step out of your comfort zone in other ways too. Impostor syndrome or no impostor syndrome, you’re probably not comfortable tooting your own horn. You can have all the confidence in the world and still be reluctant to self-promote out of a steadfast belief that a person’s work should speak for itself. It doesn’t. Men understand this, which is why they’re more comfortable tooting their horn, no matter how small the instrument.
My work has brought me in touch with scores of highly successful female partners in major
law firms. On more than one occasion I’ve watched them collectively roll their eyes over their male colleagues’ willingness to submit minor activity updates to the firm’s internal newsletter. Said one attorney, “Some of these guys think nothing of publicizing little things like that they went to a Rotary Club breakfast. Unless I was the keynote speaker, I’d be embarrassed to broadcast something so uneventful.”
Whether you think it’s “right” or “trivial” is irrelevant. What matters is that while you keep your nose to the grindstone banking on others paying attention, these guys are busy keeping their name in front of people in a position to help further their career. If you’re not naturally gifted at self-promotion, don’t worry; like any skill, it can be acquired. Read a book, take a class, or hire a coach. I know it’s hard to talk about how great you are, especially when you’re not convinced yourself. But it’s a heck of a lot harder to get noticed if you keep your own accomplishments a closely guarded secret. If you’re not telling your story, who will?
Similarly, don’t make the mistake of simply assuming that doing a good job means you’ll automatically be noticed and rewarded. You won’t. It’s true that Dee Dee Myers did not get the raise she was due. But at least she asked—something economist Linda Babcock and her colleagues discovered women often fail to do. After digging deeper into why the starting salaries of male master’s degree students were on average almost four thousand dollars more than women’s, they found that eight times as many men asked for more money. Put another way, 93 percent of the women accepted the first offer.
Men “always seem to go for the biggest brownie on the plate,” says Myers, adding, “What’s more, they expect the other guys (and sometimes the gals) to do the same.” And if you think four thousand dollars is not that big a deal, think again. As Babcock and Sara Laschever point out in their aptly titled book, Women Don’t Ask, over the course of a career the financial consequences of even a relatively small initial difference can cause you to eventually forfeit at least one million dollars in income. Say the authors, “This is a massive loss for a one-time negotiation—for avoiding what is usually no more than five minutes of discomfort.”
It is true that when your work, your voice, or your job is considered less significant, it complicates your ability to recognize—never mind appreciate—what you have to offer. On the other hand, you can’t expect other people to value your work if you don’t. In a literal sense, valuing yourself means making sure you have the information you need to attach the proper value to your expertise and labor.
Do you know the going rate for people in your field?
If not, check with industry-specific associations for salary surveys.
If you work for yourself, go online to do a fee or price check. I guarantee you’ll find people or companies with far less experience or inferior products who command far more than you do.
Once you have the information you need, remember that valuing yourself means raising your hand—and keeping it raised. It’s about knowing what you want and deserve and going for it. As you assess your current situation:
Do you routinely let those in a position to advance your career know about your goals and accomplishments, or do you wait to be noticed?
Do you tend to accept whatever is offered even if you think it’s inadequate?
Are there ways you’re settling for less or otherwise not stepping up to “claim a bigger brownie”?
If so, what’s the worst thing that could happen if you ask for more or otherwise advocate on your own behalf?
What are the consequences of not keeping your hand up or asking for more?
If you want more money, more staff, a promotion, to work from home, to get your art onto a gallery wall, or for someone to mentor you, then there’s only one way to get it: A-S-K. Obviously, just because you ask for something doesn’t mean you’ll get it. But as opera diva Beverly Sills once said, “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” Or, as is often required, if you don’t retry.
Stereotypes Matter
The pioneering congresswoman Shirley Chisholm once said, “The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, ‘It’s a girl.’ ” Diversity experts Rita Hardiman and Bailey Jackson point out two other truisms about stereotyping. Namely, the group with more power always does the naming, and the naming group either denies the existence of a given trait or behavior in their group or, when they do admit to it, the trait or behavior is renamed in positive terms.15
You know the drill: He’s commanding; you’re bossy. He’s assertive; you’re a bitch. He’s persistent; you’re pushy. He’s decisive; you’re impulsive. He’s blowing off steam; you’re hysterical. He’s carefully weighing his options; you can’t make up your mind.
Males are of course pigeonholed by stereotypes too. But careerwise, which side of these stereotypes would you rather be on? In a man’s career, being competitive, aggressive, high-achieving, and a workaholic—all hallmarks of a type A personality—are an asset, but these same characteristics are considered a career liability in you. This alone goes a long way in explaining why the impostor syndrome is prevalent among type A females but not type A males.16
Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.
—Lois Wyse, author and columnist
Even the rules for communication are different. Not only do you have to figure out what to say and how to say it, you also must worry about the way you sound saying it. If you speak in a decisive manner using a lower pitch and downward inflection, both of which are considered more characteristically masculine, you’re perceived as aggressive. But here’s the rub. Women who talk in a more conventionally feminine manner, using a higher pitch, softer volume, and upward inflection, are perceived as less competent.17
Stereotypes matter because they are so easily internalized as the truth, which, as repeated studies have shown, can in turn affect behavior. The phenomenon is known as “stereotype threat,” and was first documented by Stanford researchers Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson. Everyone knows females are lousy at math, right? Precisely because we all do “know” this supposed “fact,” merely informing female students prior to a math exam that the test is gender-neutral causes them to perform better. Telling female students the opposite, that the test had demonstrated gender differences in the past, they performed substantially worse.18 Stereotype threat comes into play in more subtle situations as well. The simple inclusion of a check box for gender on a math test causes women to perform worse than men.19
There’s more. Separate studies found that compared with subjects who were not reminded of a negative stereotype, females who were prompted
were less likely to attempt math problems on a test20
were less interested in assuming leadership positions21
were more likely to attribute their failure at a computer task to their own inability, whereas men blamed their failure on faulty technical equipment22
switched career preferences away from those involving strong math skills after being exposed to TV commercials depicting women fussing over their appearance or engaged in stereotypically female activities23
Similar findings have been found based on race and class. When African American students were told they were being tested on verbal ability, it triggered racial stereotypes about intelligence, causing them to do worse than students who did not receive this information.24 Likewise, when students in France were reminded of their socioeconomic status, those from low-income groups performed more poorly than those from high-income groups.25
Stereotypes impair men’s performance as well. Men who were told that a test measured “social sensitivity,” on which “men do worse than women,” performed more poorly than those who were told the test measured “complex information processing.” In this same scenario, women’
s performance did not differ.26
Stereotypes matter because even so-called positive stereotypes limit us by falsely altering behavior. When a golf-putting test was framed as measuring “natural athletic ability,” African American students did better than white students. But when the test was positioned as testing “sports intelligence,” the opposite was true for both groups.27 Similarly, when reminded of their ethnic identity, Asian American women performed better on a math test than a control group. But when primed to think about their female identity, they did worse.28
Stereotypes matter because generations of women grew up having their self-perceptions shaped by stereotyped notions of men’s versus women’s work. It was not long ago that paid work options for females were largely confined to teacher, nurse, secretary, social worker, or domestic. If you grew up middle- or even working-class, you learned that a job was something to “fall back on” in case something happened to your future husband. If you were encouraged or even expected to get a degree, college was frequently seen as an end in itself, not necessarily a step toward something else. It was a place for you to become a well-rounded individual in order to attract a mate, who was expected to utilize his training.
If you are of this generation, any pride you feel about breaking into traditionally male roles may be complicated by a sense of not really belonging. One senior vice president who grew up assuming she’d go to college, marry, have a bunch of kids, and then settle into being a mother and homemaker told how her plans abruptly changed when her husband died before they’d had children. Suddenly forced to support herself, she took the only job available at the time as a secretary. Over the years she worked her way up to senior vice president. Yet even today the executive admits that there are moments when she looks in the mirror and thinks, What am I doing here? This isn’t what I was supposed to be doing. You don’t belong here. You are such a fraud.
The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It Page 6