The Chairman, Access Bank Plc, Dr. Dere Awosika, and the leadership of the Institute of Directors have stressed the need to stop the undefined, mixed and disproportionate impact of imposter syndrome on women.
They gave the advice at the IoD Women’s Director Development Committee webinar with the theme: “Overcoming the Imposter Syndrome in a Rapidly Changing World,” on Tuesday.
The webinar was put together to commemorate the International Women’s Day marked annually on March 8, with this year’s slogan tagged: #Breakthebias.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that imposter syndrome is a berating feeling of inadequacy in spite of obvious successes or proof of competencies and achievements.
Awosika noted that the imposter syndrome disproportionately could affect high achieving people as well as other cadre of women who in general found it difficult to accept their achievements.
She said that to overcome the syndrome, there was the need to have a full understanding with facts and figures of the platforms and environment that supported, aided or fast-tracked it.
The Access Bank chair listed poverty and hunger, illiteracy, unemployment, gender gap in decision making, insufficient maternal health, violence and poor environmental sustainability measures as fuellers of the syndrome in women.
She noted that a large gender gap remained in women’s access to decision-making and leadership with women making up fewer elected representatives in most rural councils.
Awosika said that some of its symptoms were self doubt, inability to realistically accept one’s skills and competence, berating one’s performance, attributing one’s success to external factors.
Others, she added, were over achieving, sabotaging your own success, fear of not living up to expectations, setting very challenging goals, among others.
She said: “Gender inequality is a major cause and effect of hunger and poverty and it is estimated that 60 per cent of chronically hungry people are women and girls.
“Women in sub-Saharan Africa collectively spend about 40 billion hours a year collecting water and this significantly impacts women’s employment opportunities.
“On average, women make up about 43 per cent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries.
“Evidence indicates that if these women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20 to 30 per cent, raising total agricultural output in these countries by 2.5 to 4 per cent and reduce the number of hungry people in the world by around 12 to 17 per cent.”
She stressed the “need to x-ray ourselves as individuals away from the part of traditional and cultural systems such as racism, classism, xenophobia and other biases”.
Awosika added: “These systematic elements clearly has affected imposter syndrome as we know it today and therefore tends to want to fix women at work, instead of fixing the places where women work.
“As women, we must come together to understand, know and accept, whether we like it or not that we live in a world that values confidence, sometimes over confidence may not be advantageous and so we must create a balance.”
Dr. Ije Jidenma, President, IoD, reiterated the institute’s commitment to making the IoD more gender inclusive by making sure capacity building, learning and development of women were met.
She noted that the tabletop conversation was aimed at ensuring women were equipped with capacities for various positions of leadership, and other cadres.
Jidenma noted that the theme centred on a phenomenon faced by many but common with women making them fail to function optimally.
She said: “This has become a significant challenge among women in spite of contrary reports of their abilities to do better.
“Backed by data that diverse boards do better than those backed by one gender, IoD is stressing the need to change antiquated laws that do not allow women to blossom.
“There’s need for mindset shift globally as a world governed by both genders to give room to stand on both legs to drive development.
“We also call for policy reforms that provides equal opportunities to both genders to create a more sustainable society.”