The “Authority Gap” by Mary Ann Sieghart
The “Authority Gap”, published in 2021, explored the questions of why women are taken less seriously than men and what can be done about it. This well-written and compelling book is, unfortunately, still very relevant today.
By Janet G. Hering and Patricia A. Maurice
14 May 2024, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.11091124
In her 2021 book [1], Mary Ann Sieghart explores the various manifestations of the “authority gap”, considering authority as deriving from knowledge and expertise on a subject and/or from occupying a position of leadership and power. In both contexts, women are routinely discounted and doubted, reflecting long-standing male privilege and societal expectations for men and women. These themes are repeated in the more recent book “Glass Walls” by Amy Diehl and Leanne Dzubinski [2], who describe the appropriation of women’s ideas with the terms hepeating (men getting credit for repeating a woman’s idea, which had been ignored when she voiced it), bropropriating (intentional attempts by men to take credit for a woman’s ideas), and the classic mansplaining (mistakenly assuming that a women lacks expertise on a subject and explaining it to her in a condescending manner). Both books echo earlier observations of gender dynamics so brilliantly and humorously expressed in the scorecard for Sexist Bullshit Bingo [3] (see below).
Some key points from “The Authority Gap”
By combining her own experience as an assistant editor and columnist for The Times (London, UK) for two decades with interviews of prominent female leaders and an extensive review of the relevant literature, Sieghart identifies some prevailing common experiences. She highlights the severe penalties that women incur when they violate gender biases and societal expectations, showing how this leads to risk aversion, over-preparation, and the dreaded, but common ‘imposter syndrome’. We found it, in equal measures, inspiring and depressing to read that women at the highest reaches of power in government, industry, and the judiciary as well as in academics feel that they must be better prepared and perform better than men to be treated equally. Some especially powerful anecdotes are provided by individuals who have experienced professional interactions both as a man and a woman, comparing their experiences after a gender transition.
Sieghart also comments on the backlash of male resentment, which only seems to have gotten stronger since her book was written [4]. Women are forced to walk the tightrope of “combining confidence and warmth in exactly the right ratio for them to be taken seriously but not disliked [1].” Especial venom seems to be provoked by women who share their views on social media, where backlash – up to and including rape and death threats – can escalate from the “gentlest of provocations”.
A 500 Women Scientists book club discussion
The Zurich section (or pod) of the global organization 500 Women Scientists [5] recently held a book club meeting to discuss Sieghart’s book. We started our discussion based on three questions posed by the author [6]: (1) How can we stop mistaking confidence for competence?, (2) Is it women who need fixing or the way we perceive, react to and interact with women?, and (3) What can men and women do to stop women’s authority being undermined?
How can we stop mistaking confidence for competence?
Sieghart illustrates the benefit that man gain from appearing confident, while comparable behavior by women elicits gender-biased dislike. A key measure is to be aware of this disparity and to realize that women’s reluctance to display confidence can be justifiable. Judgements should be made on the basis of concrete evidence rather than intuition. Specific, objective criteria should be defined for performance and applied in evaluations. Ideally, false confidence would be discouraged and humility recognized as a valuable leadership quality.
Is it women who need fixing or the way we perceive, react to and interact with women?
Throughout her book, Sieghart clearly identifies systemic and structural biases against women (and more generally against individuals with caring responsibilities) in organizations and institutions designed by and for men. She also illustrates how societal biases and expectations disadvantage women in organizational settings. This includes evidence from numerous studies showing the effect of male or female names on otherwise identical applications, the response to male and female actors reading from the same script in interviews, and the impact of anonymized competitions on the success of men and women. On this basis, she calls for systemic, structural and cultural change. Recognizing how long such change can take, Sieghart also identifies some tactics that women could employ in the short- to mid-term. On the basis of her own experience, she recommends using warmth to diffuse the tension between competence and likeability. She also points to several prominent women (most notably Margaret Thatcher) who deliberately lowered the pitch of their speaking voice to command attention and respect and avoid the dreaded adjective ‘shrill’ that is so often applied to women.
In our own experience, we have found it useful to articulate repeatedly the principles and values underlying our decisions and the potential benefits of those principles and values for the organization that we are leading [7]. We have found that articulating principles and values, together with promoting transparent processes, open access to information about resources, and accountability, can help to break through the power of informal networks that are often prevalent in academia [8].
As discussed in Patricia’s three-part series on successful meetings [9], holding well-organized, professional, and efficient meetings can help all participants to feel that they understand and have contributed to important decisions. Sieghart suggests a variety of ways in which a woman leading a meeting can ensure that female colleagues can speak without being interrupted and that their ideas are properly credited. This can be an important step in changing how men interact with women. Finally, we also believe that it is important to demonstrate respect for all women within an organization, whether they are administrators, faculty, students, administrative assistants, or technicians. This can help young women to gain self-confidence and provide examples of treating all women with respect, mainly (but not only) for our male colleagues.
What can men and women do to stop women’s authority being undermined?
A critical step is to be aware of unconscious bias and gender-based expectations and to highlight their potential impacts on decision making processes. The effects of unconscious bias can be mitigated by conducting structured interviews with specific hiring (or promotion) criteria and ensuring that evidence is gathered and used to support claims of competence. It would also be possible for STEMM organizations, academic or non-academic, to adopt processes that would increase women’s participation and/or chances for success. This could include introducing more anonymized processes for funding (or other opportunities), taking steps to minimize the importance of negotiations in hiring and promotion (or at least reducing the information asymmetries), increasing the breadth of performance criteria to avoid narrow definitions of ‘excellence’, promoting co-leadership by men and women, and managing meetings and interactions to encourage full and equitable participation.
Taking a broader societal perspective, Sieghart also emphasizes the importance of paid maternity leave (which is standard in many European countries but not in the U.S.), shared parental leave with a ‘use it or lose it’ condition for fathers, and affordable, quality childcare. A more detailed rationale for such measures is provided by Nobel prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin in her book “Career and Family” [10].
Importantly, Sieghart devotes an entire chapter of her book (Chapter 4: It’s not a zero-sum game) to review the evidence that taking women more seriously and according them the same respect as men would benefit not only women but also men, employers, and society as a whole. As we wrote in previous blog posts [11], women’s perspectives and experiences are urgently needed to address pressing societal challenges.
We also believe that senior women leaders can use our unique experiences and perspectives to help members of underrepresented groups such as people of color and disabled people. As women leaders, we have experienced someone assuming we were a student, a secretary, or a technician rather than a professor and how that can immediately undermine our authority. We can use this awareness to mitigate the similar (and often even worse) disadvantages experienced by members of other underrepresented groups, which would benefit not just academia but society at large.
In closing, here are a few questions to stimulate further thought and discussion:
· What are your own experiences or observations of differences in respect for authority accorded to men and women?
· If you’ve read “The Authority Gap”, do you think that there are any key points that we missed in answering Sieghart’s questions?
· If you haven’t read “The Authority Gap”, why not?
Notes, links, and references
[1] Sieghart, M.A. (2021) The Authority Gap, Doubleday, 374 pp.
[2] Diehl, A. Dzubinski, L.M. (2023) Glass Walls, Rowman & Littlefield, 289 pp.
[3] Sexist Bullshit Bingo. Source unknown. If anyone can identify the original source, please contact us at epistimiblog@gmail.com.
[4] We also commented on this phenomenon in our posts https://www.epistimi.org/blog/liar-liar-campus-on-fire-how-to-cope-with-dishonest-colleagues and https://www.epistimi.org/blog/the-importance-of-male-and-non-binary-allies-for-women-leaders-in-stemm
[5] 500 Women Scientists serves society by making science open, inclusive, and accessible and works to transform society by fighting racism, patriarchy, and oppressive societal norms. For the Zurich section, see https://www.500womenscientistszurich.org/. For the global organization, see https://500womenscientists.org/.
[6] There is a lot of material online about Mary Ann Sieghart and her book. The three questions were taken from: https://ipinclusive.org.uk/events/women-in-ip-book-club-coffee-date-the-authority-gap/. A podcast interview with Sieghart is available at: https://www.carlamillertraining.com/blog/theauthoritygap. She also gave a TED Talk “Why are women still taken less seriously than men?” in October 2023 (https://www.ted.com/talks/mary_ann_sieghart_why_are_women_still_taken_less_seriously_than_men?language=en).
[7] Hering, J.G. (2019) “Women as Leaders in Academic Institutions: Personal Experience and Narrative Literature Review”, Pure Appl. Chem, 91(2): 331–338, https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2018-0603.
[8] Hering, J.G., Green, S.A., Heckmann, L., Katehi, L.P.B, Maurice, P.A. and Young, S. (2022) “A call for an alliance between female academic leaders and early career researchers to improve the academic STEM system”, Elephant in the Lab, doi:10.5281/zenodo.6514731, https://elephantinthelab.org/a-call-for-an-alliance-between-female-academic-leaders-and-early-career-researchers-to-improve-the-academic-stem-system/
[9] https://www.epistimi.org/blog/successful-academic-meetings-part-1-preparation, https://www.epistimi.org/blog/successful-academic-meetings-part-2-chairing-a-meeting-fgnk3, https://www.epistimi.org/blog/successful-academic-meetings-part-3-videoconference-and-hybrid-meetings
[10] Goldin, C. (2021) Career and Family, Princeton University Press, 330 pp.
[11] https://www.epistimi.org/blog/its-not-pie-how-equity-for-women-in-stemm-can-benefit-everyonenbsp-nbsp, https://www.epistimi.org/blog/the-importance-of-male-and-non-binary-allies-for-women-leaders-in-stemm.