For a long time, I believed that the uneasy moments in my career came from something inside me. I told myself I was experiencing impostor syndrome, as if the doubt was a flaw in my personality that I needed to outgrow. It took me years to understand that my hesitation did not begin within me. It was shaped by the environments I learned to navigate and by the expectations I absorbed long before I entered any workplace.
As a girl, I was encouraged to be capable, but also agreeable. I was praised for being responsible, but only if I remained gentle. I learned that conflict should be absorbed quietly rather than confronted honestly. These lessons never arrived as instructions. They were cultural air. When I stepped into leadership roles, I began to see how deeply they influenced the reactions around me.
What challenged me most was not the responsibility of the job. It was the commentary that surrounded my ambition. I have heard comments about being too busy or too focused. I have heard surprise when decisions were made firmly. At times I have felt the undertone of jealousy or the expectation that I should make room for the feelings of others before claiming authority that I had already earned. None of this questioned my competence. It questioned my right to inhabit power without apology.
The feminist sociologist Dorothy E. Smith once wrote, “Women’s experience has been created through the organising gaze of others.” Her insight helped me understand why women often second-guess themselves even when they have the skills and results to prove otherwise. Many of us grow up learning to see ourselves through the expectations of others rather than through our own lived standpoint. Confidence is not the issue. The issue is that the world often finds confident women inconvenient.
This pattern is not limited to individual lives. It is visible in the way powerful women are treated publicly. Michelle Obama has said, “I had to learn not to let others define me. Their anxieties were not mine.” Yet many still describe her presence as intimidating rather than inspiring. Priyanka Chopra Jonas has noted that “Ambition is a word people never object to when it comes to men,” which captures precisely how uneven the cultural standards are. Women who step into ambition often provoke anxiety in ways men rarely do.
Valerie Young’s book, The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women, offered me the language for what I had long observed. She writes that impostor syndrome is not a clinical diagnosis but “a response to a situation.” She explains that women are socialized to believe that competence must appear effortless and that success must remain modest. Many women learn to distrust their achievements because the standards around them are contradictory. You must excel, but you must not appear to try too hard. You must lead, but you must remain likable. These messages seep into the unconscious until hesitation begins to feel natural.
For many years, I lived according to these messages. I let interruptions pass. I tolerated comments about my tone. I lowered my voice so that I would not be misread. I adjusted myself in ways I never would have expected from anyone else. Slowly, adjustment became instinct.
Once that instinct settles in, subtle disrespect begins to feel ordinary. I found myself managing my reactions instead of addressing the behaviour. I weighed my words carefully, edited my presence, and worked to maintain a peace that was never designed to include my full self.
The feminist theorist Sara Ahmed describes unlearning as “refusing what we have been asked to reproduce.” She also writes that “Unlearning what we have learned is feminist work.” Her clarity helped me understand why change felt so physical. Unlearning is not an intellectual exercise. It requires altering the postures and habits that once protected us. It requires acknowledging how often we have adjusted ourselves to make others comfortable.
Philosopher Kate Manne offers another lens that shifted my understanding entirely. She writes that “Misogyny is the enforcement arm of patriarchy. It punishes women who deviate from patriarchal norms.” This explains why women who lead decisively often face backlash that has nothing to do with performance. Women are not punished for lack of competence. They are punished for refusing compliance. The more clearly I see this, the more I realise that my own hesitation never came from inadequacy. It came from refusing a script that was quietly expected of me.
Once I recognised these patterns, it became impossible to accept the idea of impostor syndrome as a personal defect. What many women experience is not a lack of confidence. It is the rational response of navigating environments that question women’s authority the moment it is expressed without apology. Doubt is the residue of uneven standards, not the measurement of capability.
As I look ahead, I am choosing not to negotiate my presence any longer. I am choosing to participate fully in my own life, with the authority that my work has earned and the clarity my experience has shaped. I no longer want to manage myself into acceptability or dilute the intensity of my ambition. The world has adjusted to confident men for centuries. It can adjust to confident women too.
If that shift creates discomfort, then the discomfort is overdue. The question has never been whether women belong in positions of power. The real question is how the world will respond now that women are no longer asking for permission.
Here is the truth I carry with me now. The door to power was never locked. Women were simply instructed to wait outside. I am done waiting. And I know I am not the only one.
The next era will not be shaped by women who doubt themselves. It will be shaped by women who refuse to make themselves small so that others can remain comfortable.