The lack of role models for marginalised communities has a major impact on making people feel like they do – or don’t – belong in these corporate environments. The only black woman to ever head up a Fortune 500 company as CEO was Xerox's Ursula Burns, who left the company in 2016. Additionally, women of colour are all but non-existent on corporate boards: Catalyst reports that fewer than 5% of US corporate board seats are held by women of colour, despite being 18% of the US population. But even in the top-rated country, France, women only hold 44.3% of directorships, up from 37.6% in 2016. Women in the UK fared slightly better, holding 31.7% of directorships, up from 25.3%. According to Catalyst data for 2019, women in the US held 26.1% of directorships, up from 20.3% in 2016. And although one-third of the companies Lean In surveyed set gender representation targets for first-level manager roles, 41% of them didn’t for senior levels of management.Īnd despite progress in the boardroom, where diverse voices have been historically absent, women still don’t have near-equal representation. Men hold 62% of manager-level positions, while women hold just 38%. Its 2019 research shows that for every 100 men brought onto teams and elevated to management, only 72 women experience the same thing. If you doubt yourself even when you’re doing all the right things, are you doomed to feel like an imposter, no matter what? And why, exactly, do we feel imposter syndrome – and what can we do when that feeling starts to boil up?Ĭorporate culture exacerbates the problem of imposter syndrome, particularly for women.Īccording to Lean In, a US organisation that focuses on women in the workplace, women are less likely to be hired and promoted to manager. “When you experience systemic oppression or are directly or indirectly told your whole life that you are less-than or underserving of success and you begin to achieve things in a way that goes against a long-standing narrative in the mind, imposter syndrome will occur.” “Women, women of colour, especially black women, as well as the LGBTQ community are most at risk,” says Brian Daniel Norton, a psychotherapist and executive coach in New York. It’s a feeling that many people can identify with: why do I feel like a fraud even though I’m eminently qualified for this job? Despite having education and training, many have never been able to break free of doubting their worthiness and step into any a higher level of success.īut although anyone can ask this question, imposter syndrome has an outsize effect on certain groups. You may not be able to see it around you, but imposter syndrome permeates the workplace. It was years later that I learned there was a term for what I felt: imposter syndrome. It wasn’t unusual that ideas I presented at meetings got a lukewarm reception, but two meetings later someone else suggested a similar thought, which was instantly deemed a must-write story.Įven though I knew I was capable of doing the work, I was riddled with doubt. I felt (and sometimes literally was) unacknowledged in the hallways, and my voice was hardly heard. I didn’t come from a pedigree I just was a hard-working black woman. No matter how well I did, I always felt that I wasn’t good enough for the rarefied publishing world. Although I haven’t worked in an office in more than 20 years, I still remember the feeling I used to have at my nine-to-five magazine job.
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