Lorraine Candy: ‘Why I Won’t Let My Daughters Believe In Impostor Syndrome’

I had to interview Oprah Winfrey in front of a live audience once at London’s National Theatre. It was the most nerve-racking thing I had ever done for work. Just before I was about to go on stage, an assistant, sensing my fear, kindly wished me luck. Then she added jokingly: ‘Well, if there was ever a time to suffer from impostor syndrome, it’s now.’

There it was again; that ridiculous, unhelpful phrase that followed me from job to job, niggling at my self-esteem and playing into a narrative I believe shouldn’t exist. It’s a phrase that consistently undermines female successes and repeatedly tells perfectly capable women they should not be doing something.

I was, of course, terrified of interviewing Oprah, the interviewer’s interviewer – sweat was pouring down my back and I had forgotten my own name – but I didn’t question whether or not I deserved to be in the room. I was simply nervous, and overwhelmed, a logical emotion given the situation I was in. I wasn’t an impostor.

I was cross the assistant had used this phrase because if I had my way I’d ban it. One study has estimated that two thirds of British women suffer from impostor syndrome at work, while the phrase was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018 – proof of how it has permeated our consciousness. These two damaging words linger around us like a bad smell and I consider the theory a nasty form of gaslighting that benefits the patriarchy greatly.

It’s a phrase I’m hoping we can stamp out before my two daughters, aged 17, and 18, enter the workplace, especially my eldest, who wants to be a mechanical engineer. I’m guessing she may hear it a lot in such a male-dominated industry.

Impostor syndrome was invented in 1978 after a study of female students in the US concluded that women often felt like a fraud when they were offered big opportunities. It has been a stone in the shoe of smart women ever since, because even if you don’t feel like an impostor you think you should because this daft phrase exists. It’s infuriating.

Why do we buy into a theory that whispers ‘you’re not worthy’ into the ear of perfectly capable women? It makes my head spin with rage because we have unwittingly handed women a toolkit of self-sabotage.

Why should we question our success or contemplate believing a psychological storyline that sows the seeds of doubt about our skills? I’ve heard it again and again from the mostly female teams I have managed over the past three decades as a magazine editor and journalist – every generation, from Millennials to Boomers, seems to subscribe to the fiction that we suffer momentary lapses in capability. And while I know the idea in naming ‘impostor syndrome’ is that women shouldn’t feel like impostors when faced with new challenges, I believe the prevalence of this harmful concept predisposes us to feel exactly that – to wonder if our abilities really match up.

Of course, I understand how some situations can be intensely nerve-racking at work, how we can lack confidence as we walk into rooms that terrify us, or take on roles we wonder if we are quite ready to do – this is an expected reaction when we do hard things – but we shouldn’t accept a phrase that perpetrates a myth women don’t ‘deserve’ success or that we don’t belong in the corridors of power.

We may indeed be terrified of what we are about to do or experience, but it’s unhealthy to define it by a label that can be used against us every time we have a wobble.

Rather like those sitcoms which portray mothers working outside the home as chaotic, distressed and gin-soaked, or Gen-X sitcoms that painted single women as unhappy souls whose lives would be complete if only they found a man, this phrase makes society question women’s abilities. All these unhelpful characterisations of women as ‘less than’ present oversimplified versions of us that we may accidentally accept as a possibility. That is not something I want my daughters to buy into.

I always say I never suffer from impostor syndrome, not because I am an uber-confident personality but because I want it to disappear from the vocabulary around women at work. There is better language to describe how you are feeling in these moments. And this awful phrase is tied to other belief systems, which demand women are self-deprecating about their success –

it’s the same thinking that makes us say sorry before we present an idea we know to be a good one. This negative language has to stop. It tilts us, and all the women behind us, in the direction of self-doubt and that’s not fair. Instead it’s your duty as a mum, sister or daughter to help the women you care about nurture a more positive narrative about themselves. To care for themselves more.

Be scared, be fearful, be worried, be panicky – maybe even intimidated – but don’t be an impostor in your own world.

‘Mum, What’s Wrong With You? 101 Things Only The Mothers Of Teenage Girls Know,’ by Lorraine Candy, is out 10 June (£14.99, 4 Estate).

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