In a poetry seminar last semester, I had an epiphany. I realised that after making a coherent and logical point, one of the other students concluded with ‘if that makes sense.’ I think this struck me because I was completely in awe of the point she’d made; of course, it made sense! Throughout the seminar, I began paying attention to these speech patterns and sure enough, almost every female student used some form of a qualifier such as ‘if that makes sense’, ‘but…yeah’, ‘I’m not sure though’ when we spoke. And for context; my seminar only had one male student…that’s a lot of qualifiers. Unintentionally, these phrases can cause more harm than good. It communicates to the other person that you lack confidence and can subliminally depreciate the value of your opinion. When we ask, ‘does that make sense?’ we aren’t simply questioning the clarity of our argument, but suggesting that our words lack logic.
This is one symptom of a phenomenon I’m sure we’ve all heard of: imposter syndrome. You know the premise, that weekly panic of ‘what on earth am I doing here? Everyone is so much smarter than me!’ Women have felt out of place in academic or professional spheres since we convinced men we deserved to be there, which almost seems oxymoronic; I’m not sure Ada Lovelace was second-guessing herself when she penned the first computer programme!
As the female presence in academia and the workplace grew, the phenomenon became more apparent. The definition of imposter syndrome officially coined, as ‘imposter phenomenon’, in 1978 by two psychologists, Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes. They wrote that ‘despite outstanding academic and professional accomplishments, women who experience the imposter phenomenon persist in believing that they are really not bright and have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise.’
Sound familiar? Neither the feeling nor the explanation is anything particularly new, so why is it that millions of women around the world still feel this way? In an article for the Harvard Business Review, Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey wrote that ‘imposter syndrome took a fairly universal feeling of discomfort, second-guessing, and mild anxiety in the workplace and pathologized it, especially for women.’ Imposter syndrome existed before we named it, but this seems to have catapulted the idea into a catch-all for self-doubt. As women, we are almost expected to align with this notion and those who don’t are hailed as ‘Girl Boss’ bastions. Particularly when we consider the intersection of gender and race, non-white women are not surprisingly more likely to have ‘imposter syndrome’. On average, they receive fewer promotions and face more barriers than white women.
Why is it that women are almost conditioned into believing that we shouldn’t feel as though we belong? Largely it’s down to representation. There are fewer women visibly succeeding in their careers than men, particularly non-white women; research from LEAN (a US-based organisation) found that for every 100 men hired and promoted to manager, only 72 women followed the same course. For non-white women in particular, this is an issue as there’s this insidious notion of being grateful for a seat at the table, rather than striving for what’s deserved. Women in powerful positions within companies are almost mythical – we’ve heard of it, but whether or not we can see it with our own eyes is a different story.
An ex once told me that women simply didn’t make good leaders because we’re too emotional, irrational and illogical…notice how I said ‘EX.’ Whilst this may seem totally last century, it feeds into women’s overuse of qualifying phrases in speech as a way to make ourselves seem less threatening and more polite. In a culture that allows those with psychopathic personalities to thrive within the business world, ‘likeability’ is often at the bottom of the criteria for the promotion. But as women, if we display these qualities, it’s almost a betrayal of our gender rather than asserting the social standing we’ve spent decades fighting for.
In her 1990 book, Noami Wolf argues that the perversion of ‘the beauty myth’ coincides with women’s elevated social standing, cementing unrealistic beauty standards as a modern form of control. She introduces the idea of the PBQ (or professional beauty qualification), which relates to the transactional status of beauty. Those with so-called “pretty privilege” are more likely to be afforded certain social benefits, even job promotions. Countless women have spoken about how much better they were treated at work when they performed femininity (e.g. wore makeup, heels, skirts) compared to when they didn’t. Which makes sense: when men who believe they have a divine right to objectify women-run companies and lead workplaces, they fixate upon and reward those who they believe to be more conventionally attractive. It might not be conscious but it results in those who are gender non-conforming or not traditionally feminine being left behind at work.
Next time you want to ask your seminar group ‘if that makes sense?’ or tell them that you ‘but yeah… I just thought it was interesting’ (my personal favourite), ask yourself instead why you’re undermining your own perfectly cogent and rational speech. Self-awareness is the first step to emancipation, and we’ve got a long way to go.