inequality

From the #TSPClassics Collection: The Challenges of Motherhood

Mahala Miller on May 5, 2022

Mother’s day is a good opportunity to surprise your mom with breakfast in bed, flowers, or a gift. It’s also a good opportunity to reflect on the challenges of motherhood, particularly in the United States, and consider how both individual and social change can help all mothers continue to thrive. We’ve rounded up some TSP classics, and some great scholarship on motherhood we haven’t covered, that puts contemporary motherhood in context.

Moms do More at Home

Although gender norms in the United States have changed considerably over the past half century, moms are still primarily responsible for raising children. Most moms are expected to figure out how to balance full-time work and motherhood. Moms must make it work when these responsibilities conflict, like when the covid-19 pandemic shut down public schools, leaving millions of children without daytime care. 

Although ostensibly gender norms are changing in heterosexual couples, mothers spend more time caring for children and doing housework than their male partners, even when both partners work outside of the home. The “second shift” of work that moms do at home includes the “cognitive labor” of managing and scheduling family members’ time. For instance, scheduling vacations, or doctors appointments for family members. 

Mothering Intensively and Alone

In the absence of public support for parenthood, It is particularly challenging for low-income moms to handle the responsibility of motherhood. The problem is not only that welfare support and childcare provisions are extremely limited in the United States; making matters worse, American culture tends to blame low income moms for their poverty and heavily scrutinizes the parenting decisions of poor moms put in tough positions and struggling to make ends meet for their families.

Another factor that makes parenting challenging for all moms are beliefs “ideal motherhood.”  Mothers are expected to mother “intensively,” devoting considerable time, energy, money, and emotion to their children. Although some parents wax nostalgic about their own childhoods, when they played independently with neighborhood children until the streetlights came on, or were “latch-key” kids free to play video games or watch television until their parents returned from work, they are now investing considerable amounts of time and energy in packed schedules of activities for their children and discipline through negotiation.

Diverse Moms, Different Experiences

Sociological research has also shown that “intensive mothering” and a focus on nuclear two-parent households may not accurately reflect the experiences of all mothers. For instance, Patricia Hill Collins talks about “collective mothering,” or how Black women rely on communities of caregivers and the work of “other moms” to help raise their children in a hostile society. Dawn Marie Dow also emphasizes that black motherhood is not necessarily incompatible with professional responsibilities, and black mothers have long had to balance work outside of their own home with the responsibilities of motherhood.

Sociological research also shows that for some moms, the expectations that the institutions of social life have for “good motherhood” don’t fit with their reality. They experience challenging situations that require them to, for instance, prioritize the safety of their children or make tough decisions about what expenses they can cover for their child. Some moms use “inventive mothering” to figure out how to meet their children’s basic needs for, for instance, diapers. Disabled moms and black moms are particularly vulnerable to being seen as “risky” for failing to live up to the ideals of motherhood, experiencing increased surveillance and punishment from doctors’ offices, schools, and child welfare workers. 

Black mothers, in particular, worry about the safety of their children in a world that often views black children as a threat, particularly black boys. Black mothers’ worry about their children experiencing racism can negatively impact their health. Cynthia G. Colen and colleagues found that children’s experiences of discrimination harmed black mother’s health. 

Gendered expectations of women also create challenges for women who cannot or do not want to become mothers. Women that experience infertility experience stigma, or the sense that there is something marked or discrediting about them that contributes to others’ negative perception of them. Women who are “childfree by choice” also experience stigma. 

Political and Personal Solutions?

Policy changes could ease some of the challenges mothers face. For instance, research shows that there is a smaller “happiness gap” between parents and non-parents in countries with more generous public support for raising children. Mothers also feel less guilt in countries with better social and economic support for parenthood. More generous welfare provisions could help working-class moms better meet their children’s basic needs. 

Within families, couples can work towards greater equality of responsibilities. However, studies show that most young people still expect mothers to do the majority of housework and childcare. Even when young women anticipate having more gender equality in household labor, actually implementing more egalitarian schedules proves difficult, particularly for working-class women. 

Uncertainty, Work, and Emotions

Daniel Cueto-Villalobos on March 30, 2022
A man sits in front of a document, cup of coffee, and laptop, his head resting in his hands. Sunlight streams through a window to the left. Image used under CC0.

Today “help wanted” signs are commonplace; restaurants, shops, and cafes have temporarily closed or have cut back on hours due to staffing shortages. “Nobody wants to work,” the message goes. Some businesses now offer higher wages, benefits, and other incentives to draw in low-wage workers. All the same, “the great resignation” has been met with alarm across the country, from the halls of Congress to the ivory tower.

In America, where work is seen as virtuous, widespread resignations are certainly surprising.  How does so many are walking away from their jobs differ from what we’ve observed in the past, particularly in terms of frustrations about labor instability, declining benefits, and job insecurity? Sociological research on work, precarity, expectations, and emotions provides cultural context on the specificity and significance of “the great resignation.”

Individualism and Work

The importance of individualism in American culture is clear in the workplace. Unlike after World War II, when strong labor unions and a broad safety net ensured reliable work and ample benefits (for mostly white workers), instability and precarity are hallmarks of today’s workplace. A pro-work, individualist ethos values individual’s flexibility, adaptability, and “hustle.” When workers are laid off due to shifting market forces and the profit motives of corporate executives, workers internalize the blame. Instead of blaming executives for prioritizing stock prices over workers, or organizing to demand more job security, the cultural emphasis on individual responsibility encourages workers to devote their energy into improving themselves and making themselves more attractive for the jobs that are available.

Expectations and Experiences

For many, the pandemic offered a brief glimpse into a different world of work with healthier work-life balance and temporary (if meaningful) government assistance. Why and how have American workers come to expect unpredictable work conditions and meager benefits? The bipartisan, neoliberal consensus that took hold in the latter part of the twentieth century saw a reduction in government intervention into the social sphere. At the same time, a bipartisan pro-business political agenda reshaped how workers thought of themselves and their employers. Workers became individualistic actors or “companies of one” who looked out for themselves and their own interests instead of fighting for improved conditions. Today’s “precariat” – the broad class of workers facing unstable and precarious work – weather instability by expecting little from employers or the government while demanding more of themselves.

Generational Changes

Researchers have identified generational differences in expectations of work. Survey data shows that Baby Boomers experience greater difficulty with workplace instability and the emerging individualist ethos. On the other hand, younger generations – more accustomed to this precarity – manage the tumult with greater skill. These generational disparities in how insecurity is perceived have real implications for worker well-being and family dynamics.

Emotions

Scholars have also examined the central role emotions play in setting expectations of work and employers, as well as the broad realm of “emotional management” industries that help make uncertainty bearable for workers. Instead of improving workplace conditions for workers, these “emotional management” industries provide “self-care” resources that put the burden of managing the despair and anxiety of employment uncertainty on employees themselves, rather than companies.

What Do We Know?: Child Tax Credits

Jacob Otis on February 17, 2022
Image: a young white boy faces the camera, held in the arms of a person whose face we cannot see. Image license CC0.

The impact of COVID-19 on parents and children has forced us to reconsider how the U.S. approaches traditional welfare supports. A major change that parents saw in July 2021 under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was the increase in value of their child tax credit (CTC) and a monthly payout of half that child CTC – with $300 paid for each child under 6 years and $250 paid for each child 6-17 years each month. Furthermore, the threshold for receiving the CTC was considerably raised – temporarily lifting millions of children above the poverty line. ‘Incrementally revolutionary’ for social welfare in the U.S., the extension and expansion of the CTC hads the potential to strengthen the social safety net and have a broad social impact.  Now that expansions to the CTC have rolled back, what do we know about CTC and how a more permanent expansion could support families?

Passed into law with bipartisan support in 1997, the CTC originally served as a tax break to middle class taxpayers. In 2001 and then 2008 the CTC was then made refundable and more accessible to lower income families.  Since the passage of the ARPA in 2021, the CTC is now more accessible and relatively generous than many other forms of welfare.

In measuring the social impact of the CTC, researchers have published ample evidence of this worthwhile investment. A nation-wide study found that when parents received the CTC their children were less likely to be physically injured and had less behavioral problems. Because children living in poverty are up to nine times more likely to fall victim to maltreatment and suffer from poor overall health, the CTC provides additional economic stability to lower-income parents. 

International programs similar to the CTC have found that increased payments were associated with lower levels of ADHD, physical aggression, maternal depression, and better emotional/anxiety scores among children. Experts in the U.S. have predicted that an increased investment in the CTC would have similar individual and social health impacts, remove millions of impoverished children out of poverty, and save billions of dollars in future. 

Today, with COVID-19 spurring conversations and the realization that U.S. welfare is in need of an update, policy makers have a “charcuterie board” of welfare reform choices.  Of the more savory variety there are work-oriented programs which would moderately decrease poverty and decrease unemployment.  Then there are some sweeter options that would dramatically reduce poverty, but increase unemployment. Arraying these options, a nationwide, interdisciplinary committee of experts have made four recommendations based on changes in unemployment and child poverty.  Regardless of different policy member’s palate preferences, increasing the CTC would both decrease poverty among families by over 9% and decrease unemployment by over half a million jobs – a sweet and savory option. 

On December 15th, 2021, the monthly CTC payments directed to parents expired.  In other words, parents in dire straits are no longer receiving necessary financial support.  Congressional debate on the Build Back Better bill (BBB), which could extend the CTC, provide universal pre-K education, national paid leave for caregiving or illness, and other social investments, has languished. However, for a brief period, we saw evidence of the power of expansion of welfare provisions like the CTC.

Surging Strikes

Jacob Otis on January 31, 2022
Members of a trade union on strike in Syndey, Australia. Image courtesy of Stilgherrian, CC BY 2.0.

Workers in the United States are experiencing a growing number of strikes across the country.  Record numbers of job openings, employee departures, and desperation among employers across sectors are empowering workers to push for change. But how are strikes today different from those in the recent past? And what predictions might research forecast?

Economic strikes, when  workers withhold their labor to pressure employers to increase their pay or working conditions, are risky for workers. Employers hold the right to permanently replace striking workers and “strike-breakers” (people hired to replace strikers) often gain legal protections in their new positions.  However, strikers today seem to have the wind at their back. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in recent months the U.S. has seen the highest rates of worker “quits” in decades.  Furthermore, research suggests that workers are choosing to not return to work, even as COVID-19 unemployment benefits are reduced or eliminated.  

Research on the nature of contemporary strikes has shown that they have been largely defensive, where workers were pushed to the breaking point and striked reactively.  Alternatively, offensive strikes arise during more opportunistic climates and are initiated by workers.  Under these opportune conditions with dwindling labor competition, workers gain some degree of leverage at the bargaining table with management.  

Sociological research has tracked union membership and its effects on inequality. For example, Western and Rosenfeld report that between 1973 and 2007, US private sector union membership fell from 34 to 8 percent for men and from 16 to 6 percent for women. Numerous studies have tied this decline in unionization to wage inequality and earnings instability.

In recent years, unions have increasingly engaged with coalitions and/or community groups interested in social change. By organizing with other groups, workers connect and create networks that address mutual concerns.  Social issues such as fair wages, organizational policies, and the exportation of jobs are then materialized and humanized during strikes – giving a platform for societal discussion for these social issues.  This empowerment through favorable conditions, paired with a heightened cooperation with social change coalitions may be forming an impending, perfect storm for worker-initiated strikes. 

In today’s era of a globalized workforce, ongoing public health crises, social media, and strike activity, another wave of social change may be in the air.

Mothering Without a (Social) Safety Net

Hannah Schwendeman on January 24, 2022
A mother holds an infant in front of a set of curtains. The room is dark but there is light and the shadows of trees beyond the curtains. Image via pixabay, Pixabay License.

The new Netflix show, Maid, based on the best-selling memoir by Stephanie Land, chronicles a mother’s journey out of domestic violence and towards safety. The story offers an intimate portrait of the many barriers facing impoverished mothers, including the never-ending obstacles in securing government assistance.

Sociological research has consistently found that the welfare system inadequately serves the poor. From red tape to contradictory policies, accessing government assistance is notoriously difficult to navigate. Further, welfare is highly stigmatized in the United States with shame and coercion baked into its process. 

Due to gendered expectations of parenting, mothers face increased scrutiny about their children’s well being. In particular, mothers of low socioeconomic status are often harshly judged for their parenting without consideration of the structural inequities they face. Mothers seeking assistance from the welfare system are often judged because of cultural stereotypes about motherhood, poverty, and government assistance.  

The U.S. welfare system has been a contentious subject for decades with public perceptions of poverty influencing the social safety net. The derogatory infamous image of the “welfare queen” – an allegedly lazy or irresponsible woman who exploits government programs – demonstrates how racist images of poverty and motherhood directly impacted policy making. This body of work takes a historical perspective on welfare and motherhood to consider how gender and racial stereotypes influence public policies. 

Much research directly contradicts the welfare queen trope, showing instead how impoverished families have fallen through the cracks of the welfare system. This work  highlights the astounding income inequality in the contemporary United States and the resourcefulness and resiliency of impoverished families and individuals and their struggle to survive on little-to-no resources. 

Best of 2021: When Trauma is Passed Down

Nikoleta Sremac on December 28, 2021
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is When-Trauma-is-Passed-Down-TROT-Image-600x400.jpg
Image description: Mohammed, a Somali exile, sits in a chair on the right-hand side of the image. his children sit on the floor around him, as they discuss art. Art covers the wall. Creating cultural products is one way that communities process trauma. Image courtesy of UNHCR, CC BY-NC 2.0.

Originally published April 12, 2021

Scientific developments in the field of epigenetics have called attention to intergenerational transfers of trauma. We know now that traumatic experiences can be passed down through the genes— to children, and even grandchildren, of the survivors of horrific experiences like the Holocaust or American slavery. Sociology can help show how past trauma is passed down through social ties, and about its effects on current health and wellbeing. These social consequences of trauma could be even more powerful than the genetic impacts, affecting group dynamics, identity, history, and culture. In addition to what is passed down, sociological research also provides examples of how groups are managing these social effects, in both helpful and harmful ways. 

Cultural Trauma and Group Identity
Cultural sociologists assert that in addition to individual bodily and psychiatric trauma, there is also collective “cultural trauma” when groups experience horrific events. This collective trauma compounds and complicates individual effects. In order for the process of cultural trauma to occur, the group must first recognize that a great evil has been done to them, and construct a cohesive and shared narrative that includes perpetration and victimhood. Then this narrative becomes incorporated into that group’s collective memory as an enduring aspect of their identity, like the Holocaust has been for Jews or collective memory of slavery for Black Americans.
Both perpetrators and victims of violence must contend with the horrific event in some way, as it is now permanently associated with their group. This can occur either through avoidance of the difficult past, or stigma management practices like acknowledgment, denial, and silencing.

Cultural Trauma and Group Conflict: Violence Begets Violence

Sometimes, this cultural trauma process results in further violence. As the group comes to understand the harms they have suffered and assign responsibility, they can seek violent retaliation against the offending perpetrators. Examples include the bombing of Pearl Harbor (and subsequent Japanese internment and Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings), and the 9/11 attacks leading to the U.S. War on Terror. In ex-Yugoslavia, ancient collective memories were stoked and reconstructed by elites to provoke inter-ethnic violence that led to ten years of war, genocide, and ethnic cleansing. In Hawai’i, Irwin and Umemoto trace the emotional and psychological effects of violent colonial subjugation, such as distress, outrage, and depression, to contemporary violence among Pacific Islander youth.

Memory Work: Social Solidarity and Empowerment

Sociological research also provides examples of people “making sense” of difficult pasts by doing “memory work,” which can include art, music, and other cultural production. For example, second-generation Sikhs in the U.S. are using internet spaces to challenge dominant narratives of the 1984 anti-Sikh violence in India, contributing to group solidarity, resilience, and identity within their communities here in the U.S. Similarly, the children of Vietnamese refugees are using graphic novels and hip-hop music to articulate how the Vietnam War contributes to current struggles in the Vietnamese community. This shared understanding and validation then empower communities to fight for recognition and social justice. 

When a group experiences a horrific event, the social effects live on to future generations. Understanding these effects is crucial for developing solutions to group suffering moving forward. Going through the cultural trauma process is necessary to overcome difficult pasts, but it is critical that this process occurs in a way that promotes justice and peace rather than further violence.

Visual Soc: Family Meal Conflict

Isabel Arriagada and Mahala Miller on November 15, 2021
Video courtesy of canva, canva free media usage.

Originally posted November 14, 2019

As we prepare for Thanksgiving, many people look forward to sharing a warm meal with their family and friends. Others dread the holiday, gearing up to argue with their relatives or answer nosey questions. TSP has written about the political minefield that holiday meals can be in the past. This year we want to point out that the roots of difficult dinners actually run deep in everyday family mealtime. Thanksgiving, like any family mealtime, has the potential for conflict. 

Scholars have documented how important meal time can be for families in terms of cultivating relationships and family intimacy. However, they also show that despite widespread belief that families should share “happy meals” together, meals can be emotionally painful and difficult for some families and family members.
Disagreements between parents and children arise at mealtime, in part, because of the meal itself. Some caregivers go to battle with “picky eaters.” Migrant parents struggle to pass cultural food traditions to children born in the United States. Low income parents worry that their children will not like or eat the food they can afford.
Family meals also reproduce conflict between heterosexual partners. Buying, preparing, and serving food are important ways that women fulfill gendered expectations. At family meal-times men continue to do less work but hold more power about how and when dinner is served.
Thanksgiving, or any big holiday meal, can involve disagreements. However, that is not altogether surprising considering that everyday family meals are full of conflicts and tension.

Should Caring for Kids Be a Social Responsibility?

Mahala Miller on October 25, 2021

Image: A little white girl sits on an adult’s lap in front of a laptop, her small hands covering the adults as they use the computer. Image courtesy of Nenad Stojkovic CC BY 2.0

Democrats in Congress continue toward passing sweeping infrastructure legislation. Part of the infrastructure packages would provide funding for childcare including universal pre-K for three and four-year-olds, aid for working families to pay for the costs of daycare, and paid family leave. Social science research helps place this current debate in perspective, connecting it to larger conversations about who is responsible for paying the costs of raising kids, the consequences for families of the private responsibility for childcare, and what international comparison can show us about alternatives. 

Part of the question concerns whether we should think of raising children as a social, rather than individual, responsibility. Public investments in childcare, whether through public assistance to cover the cost of childcare or a public system of universal childcare, are one way that countries communicate who is responsible for reproductive labor: the work of having and caring for children. In the United States, this is often thought of as the responsibility of individual families and, historically, mothers. Feminist scholars, in particular, have critiqued the individualization of responsibility for raising children, emphasizing that the work of having and raising children benefits society across the board. Having kids creates the next generation of workers and tax-payers, carrying on both practical and cultural legacies. Scholars argue that because we all benefit from the work of reproducing the population we should all share its costs and responsibilities.

Other wealthy Western nations handle childcare differently. For instance, in Sweden there is subsidized childcare available for all children that is considered high quality and is widely utilized. In Germany, there is greater availability of well-paying part-time jobs that can enable two-parent households to better balance the responsibilities of work with the demands of raising kids. In the United States, there is now virtually no public support for childcare. Parents are left to their own devices to figure out how to cover the time before the start of public school at age five as well as childcare for before or after school, and during school vacations. The U.S. is not alone in expecting families to provide childcare, for instance, Italy has a culture of “familialism” that expects extended family and, in particular, grandparents to provide free childcare for working families. However, as Caitlyn Collins writes, the combination of little support for families, and cultural expectations that workers are fully devoted to their jobs, makes raising a child particularly challenging in America.

There are two important consequences to the lack of public support for childcare in the United States. The first is economic. Mothers experience a “motherhood penalty” in overall lifetime wages when they exit the labor force to provide childcare, or they may be placed on on “mommy tracks” in their professions, with lower-paying and less prestigious jobs that can better accommodate their caring responsibilities. Scholarship shows much smaller motherhood penalties in countries with more cultural and institutional support for childcare.

A second consequence of little support for caring responsibilities is emotional. As Caitlyn Collins writes, mothers in many nations feel guilt and struggle to balance the responsibility to care for their children and their jobs. However, in the United States this guilt and emotional burden is particularly acute because mothers are left almost totally on their own to bear both the practical and moral responsibility for raising children. The guilt parents feel, as well as the stress of balancing childcare responsibilities and full-time work, may be one reason that there is a larger “happiness gap” between parents and non-parents in the United States when compared to other wealthy nations that provide better public support for raising children.

The pandemic has brought a number of social realities into stark relief, including the fact that individual families have to navigate childcare on their own, never clearer than when school closings kept kids at home. As we imagine a post-pandemic future and the potential to “build back better,” we should consider what social research tells us about who should be responsible for caring for kids, the weight of that responsibility, and how public policy changes might provide better care for the nation’s youngest citizens.

Mental Health Co-Response Teams

Jacob Otis on October 14, 2021
Members of Mecklenberg County’s Crisis intervention Team demonstrate their response to a call, image courtesy of Mecklenberg County, CC BY-NC 2.0. Image: A young black man sits at a picnic table, his hood up, speaking to a black woman who is taking notes. Two white police officers are in the foreground, one squatting and one standing, looking on.

Since George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis over one year ago, police reforms across the country continue to make headlines and shift the meaning of public safety. One important reform area involves responding to community members with mental health crises. Police officers have sometimes been described as  “street corner psychiatrists” because 10% – 40% of their total emergency calls involve persons with mental health concerns. 

As communities increasingly recognize that police are not mental health professionals, they have begun partnering police with mental health professionals to form Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs), sometimes known as Crisis Response Teams, or Co-Response Teams. 

‘CIT’ Programs and Effectiveness

CITs are joint responses to mental health crises by multidisciplinary teams including police, mental health providers, social workers, and hospital emergency services which have three key features: 1) community collaboration 2) training for police, and 3) accessibility to mental health services. 

Social scientists are now evaluating the effectiveness and benefits of these programs.  The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports over 2,700 CIT programs in different communities across the United States.  Research has shown that these programs increase diversion from jails and prisons to mental health services by 11% – 22%, relieve police workloads by 27%, and reduce the likelihood of people with mental illness to be arrested by 11% – 12%.  While these figures regarding CITs are promising as a short term intervention, future investments in long-term stabilization programs are needed to sustainably address mental health crises.

Promising Practice

As a promising practice, CIT has evolved over recent decades and has been successful in promoting improvements in mental health responses, increased officer confidence for working with people experiencing a mental health crisis, and reduced frequency and length of detention.  However, consistency across program elements within CITs is scattered and more exploration is needed.  Future evaluation, standardization, and regulation of CITs is necessary.

Societal responses to mental health impact every person in the US – whether it is a neighbor across the street, a colleague, a friend, or a family member.  Social science research is playing an important part in evaluating and refining policies and programs such as CITs.  Rather than punishing mental crises, CITs view them through a treatment lens – fostering healing and restoration. While this early research shows the promise of CITs as a short term “first response” intervention, this research also suggests that “second response” investments in long-term mental health care are needed to equitably and sustainably address mental health crises.

Imposter Syndrome and the Limits of Diversity

Daniel Cueto-Villalobos on October 6, 2021
A illustrated image of men’s faces in striped shirts and hats. All of the men except one, who is orange, are yellow. Image via pixabay, Pixabay License.

For many, the start of the school year brings a mixed bag of emotions, from budding anticipation to feelings of unease and anxiety about self-worth and competence, otherwise known as imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome exists well beyond academia, disproportionately affecting minorities and women, groups underrepresented in fields like business and medicine. What does social science research tell us about what imposter syndrome is, how it works, and how it can be addressed?

What it Is

Imposter syndrome, first described as the “impostor phenomenon,” refers to individuals’ perceived fraudulence and unworthiness within high-pressure environments and workplaces–the feeling that they don’t fit or aren’t really supposed to be there. It appears to be most prevalent among systematically marginalized groups like women, first-generation students, and BIPOC and queer people. Imposter syndrome flourishes in spite of, or perhaps even because of, increased diversity and representation. Individuals with imposter syndrome doubt the validity of their achievements and fear being exposed as frauds. These feelings of self-doubt and unworthiness are often compounded by social anxiety and depression, which can lead to self-sabotage. Imposter syndrome may partially explain higher drop-out rates among undergraduate groups in fields historically dominated by white men like medicine, mathematics, and science.

Impression Management

To manage feelings of inadequacy, individuals rely on what Erving Goffman called impression management. Impression management is the practice of keeping up appearances and matching one’s identity and behavior with societal expectations for social roles, positions, and identities. Imposter syndrome can emerge in settings with conflicting roles or expectations or when someone’s background, identity, and interaction style does not fit well with what is expected. This can lead people to using perfectionism and workaholism to exhibit competence. For instance, research on female facilities managers shows that performing competence often leads to higher performance outcomes despite persistent feelings of inadequacy. Displaying competency despite feelings of inadequacy can exacerbate the role conflict individuals experience or the tension between self-doubt and high achievement.

The Challenges of Diversifying

Efforts to “diversify” high-status fields like academia, law, and medicine sometimes fail to address the subtle cultural factors that can marginalize and exclude underrepresented groups. Lack of familiarity with field-specific concepts like peer review and tenure track or norms like networking or mentoring can leave individuals feeling alienated. This unfamiliarity is often at the root of the unease associated with imposter syndrome. To address imposter syndrome schools and workplaces have proposed a range of solutions including targeted mentorship programs and additional support for nontraditional students and employees. Scholars emphasize that addressing imposter syndrome should involve solutions that emphasize flourishing and well-being over identity-based inclusion efforts.