CoffeeTime Science: Imposter Syndrome

How come so many female scientists underestimate their abilities?

The coffee machine is in pieces, the engineer standing on a chair looking into its innards. Narges, Katja and I exchange a look. “Fancy a walk to the coffee shop?” I ask. “Yup,” is the reply in unison.

On the way to the coffee shop I tell Narges and Katja about a friend of mine who is currently looking for jobs and is very negative about her accomplishments and doubtful of her ability to get a good job, even though she is extremely smart, currently works in a great lab and has several high-impact publications. “She keeps saying that she feels like she only got to where she is because of blind luck, and is worried that if she gets a job, people will find out she’s actually not very good,” I explain – which is as far from the truth as possible, might I add. “There’s a name for that,” Katja chimes in, “It’s called imposter syndrome, and it is particularly prevalent in high-achieving women,” she tells us. “It’s rather ironic that scientists in particular – we deal with facts and logic for a living, after all – are prone to ignore all the objective evidence when it comes to judging our own abilities and succumb to our subjective, and – by the looks of it – distorted, view of things,” I ponder.

Come to think of it, I know a lot of professional women who have moments of self-doubt in their abilities – to a greater or lesser extent – and in the vast majority of cases these doubts are completely unfounded and contrary to a great body of evidence suggesting they are highly capable, smart, and competent professionals. “I can’t really think of any men I know who have expressed such self-doubts to me,” I continue, “I wonder whether that is because they simply don’t question themselves and are ludicrously confident, or whether they have similar doubts, but don’t vocalize or act upon them as women tend to?”

Katja tells us that some social studies suggest that men are in fact more confident than women with the same qualifications. “I’m sure there are many different things that come into play here, but it probably doesn’t help that some studies suggest that women’s mistakes tend to get remembered for longer than men’s do,” Narges points out.

We’ve got our coffees and are now sitting by the window watching people walk by. We discuss that there seems to be a lot of articles and blogs published in recent years about this subject, and that increasingly, many more social studies are also looking into the phenomenon to try and understand it. “At the end of the day, what is really important is to understand not just the why of it, but also figuring out what we can do to change both our internal narrative (meaning women) and maybe the perceptions and culture currently reigning our work environments,” I contemplate.

Happily, days like International Women’s Day offer up an opportunity to reflect on these types of issues. In the meantime, what we can do is encourage our friends and colleagues to apply for the jobs and pay raises they deserve to get, support them when they are unsuccessful, and celebrate them when they get recognized for their hard work, abilities and ambitions.

My name is Christine, and I am an immunologist. After my undergraduate studies in Oxford, I moved to London for myPhD and first postdoc. After 7 years in this magnificent city, I was ready for an adventure and decided to go to Boston for a second postdoc. Six years later, I’ve made Boston my permanent home, but I am currently on an 8-month sabbatical back in London, where I am learning new things at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine before returning to Boston. In addition to doing research, I write a series of blogs about conversations and discussions I have had with other scientists, with topics ranging from the inane to career goals and options, our research, new techniques and technologies and the like. I would like to share some of those topics with you in this blog. Want to join in? Grab yourself a cup of your favorite caffeinated beverage, read along, and leave comments.