[smsm42]

Impostor syndrom happens not because somebody was "primed", but because one knows one's own limits of competency and internal doubts better than anyone, but of course in others such things are not noticeable, so comparing oneself to others causes the person to self-doubt since everybody seems to be lacking internal struggles, deficiencies and doubts that are so clearly obvious to self.

Of course, various "positive discrimination" programs won't help this too, since once one belongs to a group which such a program targets, one has yet another - in this case, externally validated - cause to doubt if one's achievements are of one's own merit or were just bestowed by somebody else due to the fact of belonging to the targeted identity group. In this case, if the identity group is gender- or race-specific, of course this component is very prominent.

[cantankerous]

Yes! I find myself dealing with this issue really frequently. I have to remind myself that, while I can't see it, everybody's got their own internal crap they're working through and I just can't see it...so I need to stop comparing my internal bs to external achievements of others.

[nooneelse]

Absolutely. When I also derived that commonly known idea for myself (seems the only way to have a hope of internalizing it and having it stick), I tried to think of a pithy way to say it, so I would have a better chance of remembering it when in the moment. The version that won by being remembered the most, "They didn't take pictures of Lincoln's messy closets."

[wpietri]

If that's the case, then everybody would experience impostor syndrome equally; we are all more aware of our internal struggles than those of others.

Note that there are plenty of things one can do to fight structural sexism besides positive discrimination, so picking that out of the blue to discuss is a bit of red herring.

[smsm42]

Not really, the dependence on the external validation and on comparison with other people is different for different people, and so is the self-esteem and reflexiveness. So everybody would be feeling or not feeling it in a different way. The fact that some psychological problem has objective background does not mean everybody would have it the same way - people are different.

>>>> Note that there are plenty of things one can do to fight structural sexism besides positive discrimination, so picking that out of the blue to discuss is a bit of red herring.

I did not pick it "out of the blue", I chose it specifically because presence of such thing can support Impostor syndrome. I quite agree that there are better ways to go than discrimination, but I was not suggesting any and I wasn't discussing it, I was discussing possible causes for Impostor syndrome.