Unveiling the Truth: Gender Equity & Imposter Syndrome

Welcome to the show, Sara Munro!! Today's episode explores the realm of imposter syndrome and its disproportionate impact on women. Sara candidly shares her journey with imposter syndrome throughout her career. During one memorable incident, a man questioned Sara's choice to jot down "you are enough" in her bullet journal, revealing a lack of understanding regarding women's struggles with self-doubt.

Sara sheds light on the historical backdrop of imposter syndrome. She dives into research showing its varied impact on marginalized groups, who often perceive the systems themselves as flawed rather than just feeling out of place. Sara advocates for the reconstruction of these systems to foster true equity and combat imposter syndrome effectively.

Moreover, Sara shares her encounters with implicit bias and toxic behaviors in certain work environments following verbal missteps. Drawing from her scientific background, she has cultivated resilience and acknowledges that setbacks are a natural aspect of any endeavor. She emphasizes the importance of embracing imperfections and taking risks to overcome the sense of not belonging.

Transcript

Kristen Daukas: 0:04

Welcome to Conversations on the rocks. The podcast where the drink is strong and the stories are stronger. I'm your host, Kristen Daukas. And this isn't your average chat best. Here real people spill the tea alongside their favorite drinks from the hilarious to the heart wrenching each episode a wildcard. You'll laugh, you may cry, but you'll definitely learn something new. So grab whatever whet your whistle and buckle up, it's time to dive into the raw, the real and the ridiculously human. Let's get this chat party started. Hey, everyone, it's Kristen Daukas. And you are listening to or watching conversations on the rocks, the show that is unpredictable as I am and today you have the joy and pleasure of listening and learning from Sarah Monroe. Sara is up in the northern New England area, which as of this recording on April 9 just got pounded with about 18 inches of snow while some of us were in 75 degree weather. And I'm sure she's kind of bitter about that. But anyways, Sarah has experience in many fields, from fundraising and PR to digital media and even molecular biology. I'll let her maybe some other time. Talk to us about that. She's now working with small business development and gender equity organizations. And here we go. Cheers, Sarah. Thanks for being here. For having course, Sara. Sara has an alcohol free cocktail. In which if you listened to our friend, Lisa, Dan forth in a previous episode who has a alcohol free business, it's very appropriate. But oddly enough, we're all connected. So not too much of a surprise. So we today are going to be talking about impostor syndrome. And impostor syndrome is something that and I'm going to let Sarah correct me after I say it is an affliction that is pretty much only something that women experience. As a matter of fact, before I even came up to start recording, I was mentioning to Steve, and he said, I said Do you know what impostor syndrome is? And he's like, No. And I said, Well, that's very fitting that you don't. And so I kind of went through and I did the my, one of my favorite analogies, which is, you know, a man and a woman apply for a job and there's 10 qualified, you know, 10 requirements on there, a man will typically look at it and go, Oh, I've got three of those. I'm good. Let me send him my resume. Whereas a woman, well, nine times out of 10 want all not at least all 10 But maybe nine before otherwise, they're gonna say, I'm not qualified. Now. Steve made an interesting comment. He goes, Well, I never really thought about it that way. He said, I guess as men were just told and had been, you know, raised that you miss all the shots you don't take. So what do you got to lose? And I said, I'm going to use that. I'm going to roll that into it. So we're going to talk about gender and gender inequality. Well, I guess it kind of is, but imposter imposter syndrome. And we're going to dig deep. And I think in the pre show, we discover we have so much to talk about. We're gonna put it into two parts. So I'm not sure when we'll drop the second part. It might be the next week. I don't know. It's always a surprise around here. So Sarah, I'm going to turn it over to you.

Sara: 3:27

That's great. Yeah, this is this is a big topic to discuss. It really is I, when you mentioned what Stephen said to you, I remember it was a few years ago, I happened we happen to be talking about bullet journals at an event. And there happened to be gentleman there. It was a cooking event. And he said, Oh, you bullet journal, my wife is trying to bullet journal, can you? Can you show me a few pages. And one page happened to be I just taken notes, I was at a networking event, and I was taking notes from the speaker. And I had written and just I was trying to keep myself occupied while I was doing it. I'd written in big letters, you are enough? And he looked at it and he said, You are enough? Do you really need to write that down? Why is that? And why is that something that a speaker would say? And he was so far out of the realm of even considering that someone may need to remind themselves at a time where they may be feeling nervous or anxious that they are enough that there's a reason why they're in that room. Because it never ever occurred to him. And I have to say that has been something that has come up in my career over and over again, just with a lot of women. And I would also argue with a lot of folks who have been underrepresented when it comes to corporate America when it comes to policymaking decision making Leadership Teams. There's a lot of people who are underrepresented. It's not just white women, you made

Kristen Daukas: 5:05

an interesting or you kind of corrected me and are brought to my attention, something I wasn't aware of. And that was that you made the comment that women of color, it's really a white woman, pandemic white woman disease. Imposter syndrome. Yeah. Talk about that a little bit.

Sara: 5:23

Yeah, sure. I mean, I'm was in preparing for this show. I thought, I'm feeling like I have impostor syndrome about talking about impostor syndrome. Right, oh, this is something we experience. So I may have may have taken a deeper dive than needed into all of this. But it was interesting. I was reading a an article from last year in the New Yorker written by Leslie Jamison. So if people want to, we'll definitely I'll give you the okay. Yeah, we'll put in the show notes put in the show notes. But it referenced some research from the 1970s. And in that research, by Pauline Clancy, I want to give credit where credit's due, imposter syndrome fighting impostor syndrome warriors, maybe we can call ourselves that, that when it comes to people of color, and perhaps other marginalized groups, too, it's it's not that they don't feel like they deserve a seat at the table. It's that they're saying that the table is rotten, to begin with, and needs to be replaced. And I think that's the place where people who have may have more privileged backgrounds are starting to come to realize is that when we have when we really think about the biases that infiltrate everything that we do the privilege that comes in, if we really want higher quality, work products, higher quality leadership, higher quality policy, higher quality workplaces, and engender a sense of belonging and inclusion, you need to destroy the old tables. And with that will come crashing down imposter syndrome. So imposter syndrome was actually originally here's the, the historical roots of it, it was called imposter phenomenon, where research social science researchers were actually seeing that these high achieving people, typically women were having these crises of self confidence. And over time, it became called impostor syndrome. And I would say, probably accelerated in the last 10 years, with the rise of all of the knowledge that anybody can put their fingertips on. We all feel like maybe We're faking it sometimes. Like, if you aren't pale and male, and wrote a book, where do you feel that you have the qualifications for speaking up about something?

Kristen Daukas: 8:02

And I think that's a really good point. And, you know, one of the things that we, you know, we want to share a couple, you know, personal experiences, is I've been a digital marketer for over 15 years. And back in the day, you know, then all of a sudden, a couple of years later, it became, you know, what was the old saying, anybody can hang on, hang, hang their shingle by the door, right? And now, and I didn't, I agree with you. And I'm putting the things together with like, in the past 10 years, the amount of information that has become available, so anyone truly can get in, spend some time on Google. And especially now with AI, you turned around, and you can go in and ask AI give me you know, a marketing plan, give me a social media marketing plan, give me this gave me that, and it will conjure it up. And to the point where even though I've been doing it for 15 years, all of a sudden, I'm like questioning myself and my capabilities. Whereas, you know, five, seven years ago, I wouldn't even think twice about it. So I was kind of not struggling to because I've had plenty of times where I've had impostor syndrome or upon imposter phenomenon. And but just as you said that I was like, oh, yeah, it's like, yeah, so I, you know, somebody could do all that research, right, and then turn around and come up with the same thing that it took me 15 years of experience to do.

Sara: 9:30

Right. And I would ask, though, is it the same quality? Absolutely not a Yeah, AI is still a toddler. It has not reached any level of maturity, and it's regenerating? Absolutely in some play. And in some cases, it's regenerating flawed information to begin with. And then people are taking that and then creating the short form contents and talking as if they're experts. They just have a better stage presence than maybe even people who wrote the original pieces on this and they are taking it as their own or is if they've just discovered No, like they're Magellan, they've just discovered that the

Kristen Daukas: 10:16

and I'm not sure what the opposite of imposter syndrome is. But I would, here's the thing that a lot of us know, is I don't have to know everything. I just need to know more than you. Yep. Right. So you have somebody and especially with very detailed professions, you're very technical professions. If you're bringing me in, because I'm the subject matter expert. You are, I already know you don't know anything, right? It's not like you're going to do the work where it truly comes in as if we're going toe to toe with somebody that's appear in our industry. Right. So that's, that's it's definitely an interesting phenomenon. I think it is better to be to call it imposter phenomenon and not impostor syndrome. Right?

Sara: 11:06

Right. And what contributes to it is the culture that you're stepping into to either as an expert or a team member. I've worked on one team, where if a woman misspoke, I mean, it's it just astounds me that this has happened in the last four years. If a women if a woman and the team misspeaks, just like I just did, the men would jump all over it and tease you about it. If a man Miss speaks, it's like, Don't interrupt me. I mean, it's that blatantly toxic culture around that. And I it's astounding that it can it keeps going. But I have to say, I love Gen Z. Yeah, impostor syndrome, I think has really just exploded with Gen X and millennials, men and women, I would say and, and non binary folks, gender not gender expansive, folks. I think it's exploded in the last 20 years with with our generations, but Gen Z just cuts right to it and says what we've been thinking all along, and I just love them for it.

Kristen Daukas: 12:24

And when you when you're talking about that, are you talking about impostor syndrome? Are you talking about the inequality? Well,

Sara: 12:30

inequality is always has I mean, inequality, you can take back to the dawn of the patriarchy. Right when, you know, humanity used to be matriarchal systems. And you and I live in the United States, even when the early colonists in the United States, the remember the witch hunts, that part of that was silencing women in was women were getting together and sharing some of the natural medicinal practices that they had learned from some of the indigenous people, but they were also talking about the men. And that was forbidden, you know that you cannot have these cults of women getting together. That is just That's blasphemy. And it's, it's followed women through history even. I love you and I both before the show, we watched RESNA, Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code gave a commencement speech last year and recommend everybody watch that. I'll drop a link. Yeah, she talked about when bicycles were first coming to prevalence in Europe and North America, the freedom that it gave everybody, everybody who was physically fit enough to ride a bicycle. And suddenly though, when you ride a bicycle, your face gets flushed. And there they thought that there was an there is an epidemic of ill health among women, because their faces were getting flushed. Well, really, when you roll it back to this, the systems in place, when women could ride a bicycle and didn't depend on the men in her life for transport, she could go out and meet with other women and do things like talk about women's rights to vote, right. Awful things that that were happening with women having the freedom to make their worlds bigger. And the reason how they how they squashed it was to say it's bad for women's health. There was a time when the early 20th century, women shouldn't go to college because it's bad for their health. It's stressful. Women can't. Women can't endure the physicality or the mental strain of going to college. And that's why women shouldn't go to college. Right? Yeah. So

Kristen Daukas: 14:51

we can have an entire conversation on

Sara: 14:54

I know and we can end this we send this to racial inequality. It goes but it's really when we talk about the systems we feel like we don't fit in a pasta imposter syndrome at its core is we don't feel like we fit in, or that we know enough. Whereas we are in a system where we don't fit in.

Kristen Daukas: 15:13

Right. So let's talk about that. And we'll we'll have another conversation another day about the gender inequality, because that has its own, you know, and they do kind of intertwine. But what I was going to one of the, as you were talking about Gen Z, because, you know, obviously, I've got three kids that are Gen Z. I have to disagree with you there because I've watched each of my girls experience impostor syndrome. And so it's been, you know, luckily for me, I knew what it was, I was able to play doctor tokus and diagnose, you know, I saw the symptoms I saw and I was able to diagnose the malady. And but especially with my oldest when she went for her first like real big girl job, right. And, you know, she, in in some ways, she had a legitimate reason to have impostor syndrome. But let's stop calling it that. Right. It was a, it was a new job, a new career for which she had plenty of functioning, ability to do it. She had, like, you know, she went from basically bartending and events management into catering sales manager, so dealing with the business side of it, right, whereas before she was dealing with the, make sure that set table set up and this and that, so the physical side of it, right? So but in her head, she's like, I've never done this before. I'm like, Are you kidding me? You've been doing this for the past five years, it just looks different. So you know, it was just having to make her stop and think well, yeah, you haven't done this job. However, let's take a look at all the things you've done in your previous jobs that are going to benefit you in in a desk job. So in you know, I think it's just reef for all of us. It's just reframing it. What are some ideas and things that you can think of what are some if somebody or hopefully lots of people are listening, but what are some ways that as humans, but also as professional leaders, that we can either get rid of it, or help alleviate it

Sara: 17:28

was so one part, one of the first steps is to recognize that everybody has a first day, everybody at one point is new to what they're doing. Whether you inherit a business, you start a business, you're going into a well established business, everybody has a first day, and recognizing that there needs to be some structural supports to help them through that for, for instance, your daughter, right. And on the personal side, remembering you were hired for a position because of your experience, and because of what you can do. And you just may not know where, where things are at the start. But you were there for a reason. And they picked you to be there. And so letting yourself shine, also having people around you that will what's the saying that will light your candle, not snuff it out, right like that workplace that I said, if I'm I misspoke, I clearly remember it. I said eight instead of 10. And boy did they jumped down my throat instead of paying attention to what and I corrected myself. Immediately when I said eight, I knew I meant 10. But instead of focusing on the next sentence, they just couldn't let go of that. So that building a culture that is more inclusive that recognizes that people aren't going to feel like they fit in? And what are the practices and the habits that we've had for so long, that that are really hard to break? That are in some ways, the implicit bias that we carry about younger people were people from different backgrounds or people from different countries or people who have an accent, right? There is a lot of bias that we carry. And the first step to that is to recognize what your bias is and to stop that.

Unknown: 19:40

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Kristen Daukas: 20:10

It occurred to me that there are things that we as individuals personally can do. And I think one of the biggest things that women and just say women can do is check your tribe. You need to surround yourself by other women that are cheering you on. And I think when you have a solid tribe around you, that's cheering you on that says, You got this. You go girl, why you aren't you're the you know, what if you have those cheerleaders, right, instead of in, I'm gonna go back to my oldest, she for a long time had the little Deb's the little debutantes around that all they did was just tear each other up. And I'm like, white in Sam's car nation is going on. I'm like, we don't do that. We did not talk about our sisters that way. We don't do it we there are enough people out there that aren't female that are doing that that we don't need. Like if you're if you're sisterhood your sister tribe, tribe of sisters, whatever, your sorority whatever you want to call them. Squad. I liked your squad. Yes, not is not lifting you up. You need a new squad. Because I think a lot of that comes from that like I can't do this is because you know why? Somewhere along the way somebody told you that you couldn't I don't think any of us intrinsically just wake up and go, Oh, I can't do this. Somewhere along the way. We Are you Are they have been told you're not good enough to do this.

Sara: 21:54

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And have you seen the dove commercials that came out around the time of the NCAA basketball tournaments? Yes. Where that brings to light it's really brought the visuals to young women in athletics about how they usually what is it by age nine,

Kristen Daukas: 22:12

they've aged out.

Sara: 22:13

I think it's usually like middle school. It's right around, right around puberty. Right. When body image, things start to come up. It's the same with young women in math and science to I've seen it I felt it myself is that you have to be perfect, right? And I'm gonna go back to Reshma Saujani because she wrote a book called Brave, not perfect. And where she talks about how we raise boys to be brave to take risks. And we raise girls to be perfect. Yep. Right. You cannot send out an email with a typo in it. So we would set spend three hours finding the last itty bitty typo and misplace you know, any kind of misplace calm? Does

Kristen Daukas: 22:59

this sound right? And does it? Should I work my sentences differently? Exactly.

Sara: 23:03

And here's the thing, there's always going to be a typo. Absolutely. Even the most perfect person, there will always be a typo. If something is long enough, there's always going to be a typo. So just get over it. No one else is spending that kind of time.

Kristen Daukas: 23:18

And yes, I know there are three different ways to spell there. But if that all you took from my correspondence was the fact that autocorrect didn't catch they then we've got bigger

Sara: 23:29

issues, or autocorrect did have you been seeing this with your predictive text. I was writing a Word document today. And it was catching on to what I was writing about. And it was just filling in words. For me. It's like yep, that's what I want to write just tab tab over. Except that

Kristen Daukas: 23:51

brave over perfect, brave, not perfect, brave, not perfect. That kind of goes back to what Steve said, when he and I were talking about it, which is that he will you know, as that guys just go, you shoot your shot, right? What's the worst that can happen? And I think that's another dialogue that women need to, you know, oh my god, what happens if they say no? Okay, what if they don't, then you? Okay, but if you don't try it, guess what, you're definitely going to fail. Exactly. And it's just these are the kinds of lessons you know that we need to especially as we as you know, the adult females, the other big coaching, the younger ones, but I agree with you, I don't see it as much with Gen Z is you know, I've had a few interns and employees that are in that Gen Z and I don't see it nearly as much with them as I saw it with us. And I was kind of aged out actually I wasn't aged out millennials. I was just parenting, heavy duty parenting during the millennial time, but I think there was there was a lot more second guessing there was still a lot of second guessing going on with them. Millennials with that, but Gen Z, I think they're more like, Alright, so what happens if I mean if I don't make it, I don't make it big deal is the old you survived 100% of the worst days of your life so far,

Sara: 25:14

right? And I think that's where a science background has really helped me in a professional science background, not just not just classroom science, but actually Professional Science where things fail. things fail spectacularly. Sometimes, hopefully, you don't have an explosion, which I have had ones. But things break, things don't work. I had a boss say, Why isn't this suddenly not working? And I said, I don't know it was raining today. There's no, there's no conceivable reason why this didn't work. So we Let's retest it. Try it again. And then maybe, then let's see if our hypothesis is wrong, right in the end, so and

Kristen Daukas: 25:55

so something going along with that something that you combining this with the 10 years, right with the whole everything over the past 10 years. The other thing too, is any of us whatever we're doing in our work or personal life, there are so many extenuating circumstances that we don't control that. And just as you were saying that I had a client that something we were setting something up and something, you know, on the other side, not hers or not mine, but on the other on the technical side of it went belly up. And she was pretty upset with me. And I'm like, I can't control that. Like, I set everything up. I do the things when I'm going through and I'm ABX testing everything, everything is fine. Once it's done, if something happens to the software company, you know, ABC. There's nothing I can do about that. That's not a me thing. That's a dumb thing. But it's so easy for everybody just to you know, want to look and point and go oh, no, you touched it last. I'm like, Well, no, actually, I kind of do.

Sara: 26:58

ABC. Yeah. And I think that is an artifact of being consultants too. Right? We're paying you so much an hour, this should be perfect. It's like, well, everything has an imperfect system. Internet's go down global pandemics, people get sick, child care falls through, people have have to take care of their mental health to I see us being much more humane. Now. Like if someone as lost childcare or they're sick, it's like, okay, we need to recalibrate the deadline. Figure out how to get this done before 2020. Oh, you have the flu? Could you if you're sitting up right now, could you at least proofread this email?

Kristen Daukas: 27:46

But the instance that I just spoke of? Yeah, it definitely made me question myself. 100% I went through before I came back with a response to my client. And I went through to all the checks and balances. And I'm like, check, check, check, check, check. But it made me go. Did I did I did something wrong? Did I miss a stand? Yeah. You know, and, you know, I don't get imposter phenomenon very often. So it's just funny how easy it is to slip into that. Whereas I can imagine that some body in the other sex would have been like, Oh,

Sara: 28:27

right. All right. Yeah, I have dug into someone say this, this email, that email has to be rescinded that you sent to 5000 people because so and so. Okay. People are saying people are calling saying that there's a mistake, and that this isn't working. And and so my favorite line back to that? How many people right? You know, as a consultant, I got to see it. When was it? It was when Sheryl Sandberg it was before she wrote lean in. She had talked about how corporations and businesses need to treat contract people better that were wearing them out. I mean, it goes way back to whenever that was what early 2000s

Kristen Daukas: 29:13

I think she wrote that book. Um, I think it was more like around 2010 ish.

Sara: 29:18

It was henna. Yeah. It was quite, quite, that's okay. Yeah, yeah. But she was saying that we are developing a gig economy and that consultants and freelancers are going to be used more and more, and we need to treat them better that no, it is a system problem. And how many of us now right into our client contracts that certain things are beyond our control? Right?

Kristen Daukas: 29:46

I learned that lesson several years ago. It's like yeah, it is not my fault if meta goes down. I'm sorry if Facebook is down yes, it's a it's a trending hashtag on Twitter or x. But it's not my I can do nothing about it.

Sara: 30:02

And I defend a designer who comes back and says You made another change, you have to approve this proof I, I'm the same with our printers. I've had to eat a printing bill with a client. Because there was a typo in it. It was, it was, it was like a significant piece that needed to be fixed. We had to rip a page out of a program and put it back in for an event. We had the time to do it. But I hadn't written in my contract. final proof approval means final proof approval. I am not the final proof approval. So I learned that lesson pretty hard. Yeah. So

Kristen Daukas: 30:39

the ones with the ones that take money out of our pocket book are always the ones that we go, okay, next rendition while you're up and go, okay. Oh, my light just went off. And now it's, I'm like looking. If y'all can't see me, I'm like looking. Oh, Rudy.

Sara: 30:56

I know where we're at. You talked about the 18 inches of snow. Well, the benefit that we had was 50 degrees over the weekend and a total eclipse we were in the path of totality. So the snow last week was okay, that fluky internet when we talk about things going wrong. Like, yeah, I have to say, I can do these live shows, as long as the internet is stable. And during those snowstorms, internet was not stable. So it's just like, yes, those emails were all in my outbox. None of them went because internet went out. Oh, well.

Kristen Daukas: 31:34

And did you witness a rapture? I'm sorry, joking. Johnny raptures.

Unknown: 31:43

Have we survived at this point.

Kristen Daukas: 31:45

I don't. I was talking about this to my my trainer today. It was like, you know, I remember the 2017. We were totality here. I don't remember anybody talking about a rapture. I'm like, this world is start. I'm starting to feel old because I'm starting to say, What is wrong with this world?

Sara: 32:05

Well, look at it this way. We survived y2k. Yeah, we survived. Wasn't there a rapture in like 2006 2000? Net? Well, we survived the crashes of those times, right? We're Gen X. So we've just we've survived how many recessions? Oh, yeah, right, honestly.

Kristen Daukas: 32:21

Yeah, that's why we're the fafo. Generation. Okay, we are going to wrap this up a little bit. And then we are going to Sarah is going to come back and we're going to go into more of a instead of just, this is kind of like, um, this was impostor syndrome. 101. Right. But what I want us to talk about when we get together, again, is a little bit more about what businesses and people that aren't impacted. Let me say it that way, people that are not impacted by impostor syndrome, what can what can what can we do? How can we support? How can we get rid of it? How can we support these women? And I also want to talk a little bit then too, about just kind of continuing to up end this system that no longer serves any of us well, even the ones that it supposedly serves, I don't think it serves them very well, because they're having to live a little bit of this life. So in closing, what would you like? What any closing comments before we sign off on this

Sara: 33:24

closing comments, I would say, I will take a page from Brave not perfect, and to say that everybody deserves the opportunity to take a risk and to embrace some imperfections. And that is part of life. Right? And, and I can say that from a privileged, privileged position. And also recognize that there are inequities that I faced too, and that it's okay to stand in your own space, as our friend Lisa says, stand in your brilliance. Right, right, and lift each other

Kristen Daukas: 34:05

up. And that, my friends, is something you will hear me talk about all the time. Going back to what I said earlier, it's like, you know, make sure you've got a good squad around you that surrounds you. And if you don't find a new squad, because they're not for you, and when you do need them, they're not going to be there, at least not to help you. They'll be there to watch you fall. But that's about it. So till next time, my friends, thank you for tuning in and I will catch you on the flip side. As the saying goes, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here and that's a wrap for this week's episode. A big thanks to my guests for sharing their story and to you for listening. Don't forget to share the show with your friends and spread the words and if you'd like to be a guest on the show, the link is in the show notes till next time cheers