Imposter syndrome is often framed as a personal flaw women are inherently plagued with. Ilona Maher challenges this, urging us to rethink how we view success, humility, and pride. Maher’s argument is positioned in a wider conversation, and Travel Editor Ella Ruddle pulls together women’s experiences with imposter syndrome to discover the newest solution to the phenomenon: undiagnosing ourselves from it.
Imposter syndrome, understood as the inability to believe one’s success is deserved or earned, is a term bandied around constantly in the self-help space. If you google ‘how to overcome imposter syndrome,’ you are inundated with results telling you that ‘it’s okay everyone experiences imposter syndrome, but it is your job to make it go away.’ Get a mentor, practise positive affirmations, or learn how to say no. But what if it’s not our problem to fix? Ilona Maher, Olympic rugby union player and social media personality, shared her view on imposter syndrome recently: it isn’t something women have, it's something we are told to have.
CNN’s Christine Macfarlane’s interview with Maher in January was the catalyst for revisiting the conversation on imposter syndrome. She asked Maher, “How do you overcome imposter syndrome?” she responded frankly, “I don’t have that…I think people are told sometimes to feel like they have that imposter syndrome. But it's okay to be proud of what you have done.” In an Instagram video, she fleshes out her point further, explaining that “people automatically assume successful women have it” and that because someone is performing at a high level, they must feel undeserving of their achievements.
It’s unhelpful to jump entirely to the other ship and say imposter syndrome doesn’t exist because it’s clear people do resonate with the symptoms of feeling like a fraud. Still I wonder, like Maher, if we accept this diagnosis too quickly. Women in particular, relentlessly search for solutions to our fear of being ‘found out’ as inadequate and never wonder why we might feel like that in the first place. Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani, who penned the speech ‘Imposter Syndrome is a scheme’ said, “The way our culture talks about imposter syndrome, you... could mistake it for a medical condition.”
In its origin, imposter syndrome was never created as a ‘disorder’. Psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, who coined the idea, titled it the imposter ‘phenomenon’. Leslie Jamison, professor at Columbia University, explains the pair created this concept to help high-achieving women feel seen - but this may have gone too far. Through overuse and the growth of social media, we have pathologised the imposter phenomenon into a ‘syndrome’ that women all inevitably come down with. When commenting on Maher's take, Zara McDonald and Michele Andrews from Shameless Media said, “The frequency in which we talk about imposter syndrome ends up being the self-fulfilling prophecy.”
We relate to experiencing imposter syndrome because we relate to the constant pursuit of being humble and inoffensive.
Whatever happened to being anxious about something or feeling in over your head because you care, not because you have imposter syndrome? The Harvard Business Review explains we have blown these everyday feelings of nervousness out of proportion to the point where these feelings mean women suffer from imposter syndrome. What Clance and Imes created in the 70s was a concept women could identify with not something reminiscent of a medical diagnosis.
Studies have risen in the last decade that analyse the relationship between women and imposter syndrome more closely. Saujani goes as far as to say “Imposter syndrome was [created as] a reaction to women’s progress.” Through imposter syndrome, women become hyper-aware of their insufficiencies, each compounding to keep them feeling small. Women, too, actively lean into the traits of imposter syndrome because they are the antithesis of arrogance and self-importance - not historically valued attributes in women. We relate to experiencing imposter syndrome because we relate to the constant pursuit of being humble and inoffensive. Macdonald and Andrews believe imposter syndrome has become overinflated because we feel inclined to align with it to remain palatable. God forbid we express pride in our achievements!
Maher’s point is that humility and pride don’t have to be mutually exclusive for women. In the same Instagram video, she says it's not about whether you have imposter syndrome. It's about staying grateful and believing “in yourself and…that your success is earned.” Maher, at 28 years old, is exploring what it means to be a successful woman in sport. Her social media presence centres her life as a rugby player but has always been about breaking down our assumptions about womanhood, femininity, body image and confidence. Instead of being distracted by the ills of imposter syndrome, she is focused on breaking down the systems that enforce it in the first place.
Saujani reinforces this in her speech to the Smith College graduating class of 2023 when she says “Imposter syndrome, it's a distraction, it's a strategy, it's a way to keep our concentration on our alleged inadequacies, so we don’t turn it towards the sexism, the racism, the classism, the homophobia, the transphobia that is” already etched into the system. When we aren’t so caught up in practising likability, we can get a lot more important things done.
Do you think we are asking NFL players, male basketball players whether they have imposter syndrome? Probably not! Probably freaking not!
Maher was disappointed that Macfarlane, among other journalists, automatically assumed she dealt with imposter syndrome. She took to Instagram after the interview, sharing, “Do you think we are asking NFL players, male basketball players whether they have imposter syndrome? Probably not! Probably freaking not!” Yet the pair from Shameless Media advocate for Macfarlane, explaining that, of course, she asked this question because “it's the zeitgeist bandied around.” We are always trying to find new ways to battle feeling like a fraud.
I am glad she asked the question, however, because in many ways she found the ultimate solution to imposter syndrome: un-diagnosing ourselves and unsubscribing from it entirely. Seeing the imposter phenomenon as a scheme, not a syndrome.
As Saujani remarks in the closing moments of her speech, “Pursue what you want to pursue as if imposter syndrome is just two made-up words on a page” because that is what they are. Maybe next time someone asks you how you deal with imposter syndrome, just reply with “I don’t have that,” and you might end up believing it.