Imposter Syndrome A Symptom of the Struggles Women Face in Academia

[Music]

so let’s start with the basics what is

the imposter syndrome

well it can be defined by many things

but

essentially it’s the feeling of being

inadequate or a fraud and having a worry

of eventually being found out

essentially what it is is you feel like

everybody else has a better idea of what

they’re doing than you do

and the way that this can manifest is

for example by telling yourself

i’m not smart i just work really hard

or i just got

lucky or i got in because they pity me

or i got that because they like me

so as a raise of hands how many of you

in the audience have ever felt like you

were an imposter

either chronically or sporadically

yeah me too

it’s not and i’m glad it’s not just me

um and i see that the majority of you

did raise your hands and i think i speak

for all of us that raised our hands in

saying that if you did not raise your

hands we are extremely envious of you

so what’s interesting about this term is

that it was coined in 1978 by two

researchers pauline clance and suzanne

eimes and originally they described this

phenomenon in women with high achieving

careers

that were usually in male-dominated

fields

now that’s not the case today this is a

very common phenomenon that exists both

in men and women but what i want to talk

about

today is the fact that potentially the

imposter syndrome isn’t only due to some

form of internal insecurity that we have

but potentially also due to external

factors

so a little bit more about

me so i graduated about six months ago

and

i had a pretty

ideal graduate experience

i got to go to international conferences

i got to run pretty much

any experiment i ever wanted and my

supervisor was really supportive

however i did struggle with a really

strong sense of being an imposter

throughout my degree

and it didn’t matter which publications

or awards

or

acknowledgments i got i never felt

like

i belonged

and what this personal experience of

mine i’m going to talk about

demonstrates is potentially this wasn’t

just my own internal insecurity

so here i am one day i’m in the lab

and i get a great idea

and i decide to run an experiment as you

can see i’m super happy i’m running my

experiment doing my thing

and

i get some really interesting results

and i’m super excited about these

results i’m convinced that this could

potentially advance patient care that

this would be really interesting for the

scientific community and i really want

to publish these

so i go show these results to my

supervisor

unfortunately i’m not met with the

reaction i expected

i met with confusion and a general

disinterest so i’m a little bit

disappointed

but i’m also extremely stubborn so i

start showing these results over and

over and over again for the span of

about a year and

every single time i show these results i

get the same response

first of all he’s forgotten about my

results and second of all just

not very interested

so i have been struggling with feeling

like an imposter throughout my degree

but this is getting really bad at this

point i’m starting to question my place

in academia

if

even my scientific ideas are interesting

for the scientific population

but there’s a second part to this story

one day my male coworker who was a new

student that had just started in the lab

he’s a very smart student too

and he decides to run exactly the same

experiment that i did

but in a slightly different system

so you see him he’s here he’s happy

running his experiment

and he gets the exact same results that

i did

but

and so he’s really excited and so he

goes to see our supervisor to show him

the results

and he gets a very different response

from me

i want to point out again here that my

supervisor has forgotten about my

results that i’ve presented over the

past year

and

the response that my co-worker gets is

wow you’re going to cure cancer

this is worthy of publishing

and amazing let me show everyone and he

proceeds to run around the floor to show

all the other professors about these

amazing results

now two things are extremely clear about

this illustration

number one i think we can all agree that

art is my true calling

and number two is that it wasn’t that my

scientific ideas were flawed or not

interesting for the general public

it’s just that i wasn’t the right

vehicle for these ideas to be taken

seriously

so at this point i started thinking

about was this just my experience

or was this very common for women in

science

so i’m going to show you and talk about

three different publications about how

women’s competency has been viewed in

science over the years

and this is three of hundreds if not

thousands of similar publications and

this also applies to any male-dominated

field this isn’t just for academia

for example in 1997

researchers published a paper in the

journal nature and this is important for

my next point so what the journal nature

is is a very prestigious scientific

journal that authors want to publish in

it’s very well recognized by the

scientific community so these

researchers published the results of the

swedish medical research council about

how they attribute their funding

to applicants

and what they find is that

for women to have an equal competency

score to a man

she would have had to produce 2.5 times

more science

if they’ve contributed the same amount

she would have consistently gotten a

lower score in scientific competency

so that sounds outrageous right just off

the bat but what does 2.5 times more

science actually mean

well according to their metrics it meant

not one

not two but three extra nature level

publications to be considered as

competent as a man

so what’s clear

about this is that women aren’t less

competent than men in science they were

just being graded on a different scale

but this was over 20 years ago what

about more recently

well in 2015 there was a really

interesting study that was conducted on

an undergraduate class this class was

done remotely so the students didn’t

have direct interactions with their

instructors and only knew their

instructors by first name

and the students were divided in

multiple groups one group of students

was assigned to an instructor with a

male name that was taught by a male

instructor

one group was assigned to an instructor

with a female name taught by a female

instructor

and then the opposite was the case where

you had one group assigned to an

instructor with a male name topped by

the female instructor and one group

assigned

to an instructor with a female name

taught by the male instructor and what

they found is that it didn’t matter what

the gender of the instructor was as long

as the instructor had a female name they

would consistently get a lower score in

teaching ability

so what’s also interesting about this

study is that this was done on a class

of undergraduate students composed of

men and women so that means that this

unconscious bias that we have

isn’t just

related to men it’s also me and all of

you

and this is something that we can’t

necessarily control

next in 2016 there was also another

study done

asking undergraduate students to rate

their peers in academic performance

what was found is that male

undergraduate students consistently

overestimated the academic performance

of their male peers and significantly

underestimated the academic performance

of their female peers compared to the

actual academic performance

so again this showed that there is no

actual difference in competency academic

performance teaching ability between men

and women it really is the perception of

competency

that is different

so why is this still the case what is

still holding us back from moving

forward why do we still have these

biases unconscious biases that exist

against women in science

well there’s many reasons

and very complex reasons but i’m going

to focus on one particular aspect

and that’s for example publications that

come out like this one and this was a

publication that came out

a year ago exactly in a journal called

nature communications which is also a

pretty prestigious journal

and it was eventually retracted after

causing lots of waves in the scientific

community and when for those of you that

aren’t in science when a journal is or

an article is retracted from a journal

it’s usually because the authors have

come to light to new information that

makes their results either flawed or

their interpretation flawed

what they were showing in this paper

is that if you were in the context of

academia and you were a female mentor

you were hindering the future success of

your female student

so again

demonstrating that women were less

competent as mentors teachers and

academics but the main problem here is

that

they were interpreting correlation with

causation

and completely disregarded the societal

aspects that could easily explain every

single one of their results

so unfortunately what this is doing is

reinforcing this unconscious

negative bias that exists against women

in science even if we’re reading this

article and we know for example it’s

retracted we still have read what they

wrote and we still are reinforcing this

negative bias

now the second part about this

paper

that was problematic is the solution

they were suggesting

what they were suggesting is if you are

a male mentor you should always be

paired with a female student and if

you’re a female student you should

always be paired with a male mentor

which should potentially

um

allow female students to do better in

science

unfortunately this is disregarding the

historical nature of sexual harassment

that has happened against women in

science

specifically relating to academia 52

percent of u.s academic medical faculty

women reported experiencing sexual

harassment

in their careers

that’s one in two women

so not only is this type of publication

reinforcing this unconscious negative

bias it’s also potentially putting women

more at harm

now here’s a quote from valerie young

the secret thoughts of successful women

which is a book about the imposter

syndrome that i highly recommend for any

of you that is struggling with feeling

like an imposter regardless if you’re a

man or a woman

and what this quote says is

being female means you and your work

automatically stand a greater chance of

being ignored

discounted trivialized devalued or

otherwise taken less seriously than a

man’s

now that’s a very powerful quote

and it should make you feel a range of

emotions

you might feel mad you might feel sad

you might feel defensive and what i want

you to do is to sit with that emotion

and really try and understand

where it’s coming from

take into consideration everything that

i’ve talked about earlier

and really try and see why you’re

feeling this way

now to go back to my personal experience

what ended up happening in that case is

that i confronted my supervisor

i told him look

i’ve presented these results

for the past year and didn’t get any

response

and he was genuinely surprised he had no

idea

and i did end up getting the credit that

i deserved

unfortunately that was a year later

that potentially

delayed our publication

now what i want to suggest is

if you are in charge of women in

academia or in any male dominated field

to encourage having these discussions

regardless if they’re taboo or difficult

to have encourage women to claim their

credit to interject when somebody

interrupts them in a meeting

because unfortunately if we don’t have

these discussions and we continue

ignoring discounting trivializing

devaluing

50 or so percent of the scientific

population’s ideas

we’re not only holding back women in

their careers

and potentially their want to continue

in academia

we’re also holding back science as a

whole

thank you

you