I went to Strathclyde University in 1968 when I was 17. My mother worked in a bar and my dad was an engine driver. I grew up in a council house and I was the first in my extended family to go to university. I spent the first couple of years at uni never speaking in tutorials and was taken aback when I got a good mark for my first politics assignment.
I never failed an essay or exam, but this didn’t stop me repeatedly fearing that a lecturer was going to call me to the front of the class to tell me that there was some mistake – that I wasn’t clever enough to be there.
I now know that there’s nothing unusual about this fear. Indeed, it’s such a common feeling that it now has a name and has been studied by academics. It’s called the imposter syndrome. Females suffer from it much more often than males and so do people from underrepresented populations. And that certainly described me. My sociology class was given data showing that at that time girls, like me, with semi-skilled fathers comprised less than 2 per cent of the UK university population.
I’ve been remembering these feelings as I’ve been reading Cassandra Speaks by Elizabeth Lesser and it includes a chapter on overcoming the imposter syndrome. It’s mainly about women and power but also about women’s voice and why we hear it so little in the public sphere. The book is subtitled ‘When women are the storytellers, the human story changes’.
For me, Cassandra Speaks was not only interesting but exactly what I need to hear on the cusp of the publication of my latest book – A Time of Hope: The story of Scotland’s Centre for Confidence and Well-being. As the title suggests, in this book my role as author is that of storyteller.
Origins and myths
Lesser covers other topics in her book which I also found helpful in this pre-publication period. She outlines old origin stories and myths where female figures like Eve and Pandora are presented as ‘impulsive, trustworthy, and disobedient’. She shows us how women are marginalised and told they talk too much and have nothing useful to say. Worse still, women internalise these messages and censor themselves, not having the confidence to make their voices heard.
I like the fact that Lesser doesn’t demonize men or imply that they’re all the same, but nonetheless argues that it’s masculinity which is associated with domineering power, unleashes war and is ruining our planet, things that are all too evident in today’s world. This is why we need to hear and respect women’s voices telling different stories. Stories based on the values of nurture, community and respect for difference.
I plan to outline in a later article what I did to transform myself from an underconfident young woman in the 1960s and 70s to someone who has written six books, given talks to thousands of people and set up the Centre for Confidence and Well-being. But that’s not my purpose here.
I always intended to devote a section in my new book to reflect on what it meant to be a woman leader of the organisation I founded and whether it had been a challenge for me personally, particularly in Scotland which historically has not been known for its encouragement of women. In the end other topics demanded attention and apart from an encounter with misogyny I don’t specifically look at anything to do with my gender.
So I’m delighted to report here that 20 years ago I didn’t encounter sexist push-back when I was engaged in setting up the Centre. A number of men working at the Scottish Executive, did what they could to make it happen and First Minister Jack McConnell committed his government to an initial three-year funding package. The Centre also received cross-party support. The fact that its main leader was a woman was irrelevant. Nor did it seem to matter to the thousands of people, many of them men, who read my books, heard me talk or who were involved in some way with various Centre initiatives.
However, in the first year after I established the Centre and we had an office in Glasgow, I did encounter naked, but ineffectual, sexism: I was visited individually by at least six men involved in consultancy or training to say effectively, ‘I don’t know how you’ve pulled this off. There must be some mistake, I’m the one who should be getting money from the government.’ These men then spent the rest of the time telling me that I couldn’t possibly run the Centre or do anything meaningful without their input. My standard reply was a diplomatic version of ‘I’m managing really well without you’.
Of course, I was never working on my own. I always had a Board including both men and women but the Chair has always been a man (Willy Roe, Fred Shedden and Phil Hanlon) and each in their different ways has supported and encouraged me. Professor Phil Hanlon, who joined the Board in 2006 and who has chaired it for the past ten years, has been particularly important to me.
Phil, now retired, was a professor of public health at Glasgow University. Phil cares about evidence but he has always been interested in how to bring about large-scale social and cultural change. Like many, I always considered Phil to be a visionary. He also grasped that to understand why the west of Scotland has so many health and social problems it’s essential to depart from traditional academic enquiry with its narrow, highly specialised approach and embrace a more integral, multi-factorial analysis. He thinks that my various books, and the Centre more generally, encouraged this perspective.
Scottish sexism – and bringing about change
I know I wouldn’t have done all that I’ve done without his intellectual input and support because I was always aware that there were some, but by no means all, male academics in Scotland, who didn’t just disagree with what I said but who wanted to shut me up. I’m not being needlessly paranoid and in my new book provide evidence of misogyny.
I’ve persisted for one simple reason: I want to broaden the analysis of Scotland as it’s currently focused myopically on politics. No matter the topic, in Scotland all roads lead back to the constitution and Scotland’s relationship with England. Of course, politics matters but not to the exclusion of seeing other important things that are also going on. The dominant political analysis excludes so much of life – the way we feel about ourselves, how we relate to others, our values, the dynamic within families and most importantly how we raise children.
In A Time of Hope I update my analysis of Scotland and argue that if we want to understand why Scotland has so many health and social problems, we must look at Scottish culture and see how it has been a breeding ground for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and been blind to what children need for their healthy development. This is why I include chapters on early years, play, ACEs and Scotland’s astonishing and cruel use of the belt in school till we were forced out of the practice by the European Court of Human Rights in 1987.
If this means that I’m taking a woman’s, rather than an academic’s approach to understanding Scotland, and that I’m not interested in simply observing but also trying to bring about change, then I plead guilty as charged.
I’m also pleased to say that it has been this drive and commitment which has encouraged me to use my voice and helped me to overcome any lingering doubts about my abilities and self-worth. Doubts which made my young years challenging and still thwart the potential of so many women.
A Time of Hope: The Story of Scotland’s Centre for Confidence and Well-being is published by Argyll Publishing on 2nd December 2024. For information on the launch and how to purchase go to the home page of www.postcardsfromscotland.co.uk where this blog was first published.
Fraser says
Congratulations. Inspiring story.