The Authority Gap – A Fireside Chat with Mary Ann Sieghart

A study of proceedings at the US Supreme Court found that female justices were interrupted three times as often as the men were, and 96% of the time the interruptions were made by men. When even the highest court in the most powerful nation on earth is home to this kind of behaviour, it suggests that women may indeed face a challenge being recognised and taken as seriously at work as their male colleagues are.

This was one example of several offered by the author, consultant and journalist Mary Ann Sieghart in a fascinating discussion of the phenomenon she calls “the authority gap”. What is this phenomenon? “The authority gap is a measure of how much less seriously we take women than men,” Sieghart explained. “We assume that a man knows what he’s talking about until he proves otherwise. Whereas for a woman it’s all too often the other way round.”

A former assistant editor at The Times, Sieghart published her best-selling book The Authority Gap – why women are taken less seriously than men, and what we can do about it in 2021. She recently spent an hour in conversation with the co-founder of Eden McCallum, Dena McCallum, to explain how the authority gap manifests itself and what businesses can do to close this gap, reducing its harmful impact.

Simply naming the problem is a useful first step to doing something about it. On first entering the workplace, Sieghart reflected, she had noticed that women were often listened to less than men. Their views were respected less than men’s. They were assumed to be less competent than men.

After years of witnessing this (and being on the receiving end herself), Sieghart began a study, pulling all the evidence together. “We still accord less authority to women,” she explained. “A lot of women have said to me – thank goodness you’ve named it because now I understand what is really going on.”

It can be reassuring to recognise that a failure to be listened to or respected is not your fault. As Sieghart put it: “It’s not something that’s happening to me because of my failings, it’s happening to me because I’m female…Women are twice as likely to say that they have to provide evidence of their competence, nearly twice as likely to say that people are often surprised at their abilities,” she added. “And women of colour are twice as likely as white women to say these things. So the further you are from the white male middle-class default, the wider the authority gap becomes.”

Sieghart described what the authority gap looks like in practice. “Women are routinely more underestimated, patronised and undervalued,” she said. “They are interrupted and talked over much more than men are. Their views are listened to less, so they find it harder to influence a group. Their expertise is challenged more. They’re much more often mistaken for someone more junior. And if they are in a position of authority that authority is more likely to be resisted.”

An interruption is a powerful kind of humiliation, Sieghart said, as it suggests that what the man has to say is more important and more interesting. “Everyone in the room sees that,” she added. “You are literally being silenced and your voice is not being heard.” At least as bad is the familiar occurrence of a man making the same point that a woman had made ten minutes earlier but getting all the credit. Women may blame themselves for this, Sieghart said, feeling that they have failed to make an impact.

Another contemporary proof point is the experience of two Stanford professors who have transitioned to a different gender. The trans man found he was taken more seriously after transitioning, whereas the trans woman found professional academic life harder. Yet their qualifications and capabilities had not changed at all.

Confidence

Is part of the problem simply that men tend to be more confident than women in a professional setting? “It is certainly true that men are on average more confident than women,” Sieghart said. “Authority gap behaviour undermines confidence. But also we are socialised to be less confident than men,” she added. “Right from childhood boys are given licence to be more confident, more self-promoting, to boast, to be competitive, that’s how they bond with each other, by bigging themselves up.

“Girls bond with each other by doing the opposite,” she went on. “We are trained to be modest and self-deprecating. We bond by admitting vulnerability rather than bigging ourselves up. And if we start to behave the way boys and men do, people don’t like it. Assertiveness training may not help, because once you start to behave as confidently and assertively as a man people find it uncomfortable, because you are going against the stereotype.”

Even our vocabulary points to the existence of an authority gap, Sieghart argued. When a woman is confident and assertive people may start using words such as strident, aggressive, scary, bossy – “All these words that are never used of men showing the same character traits,” she said.

The answer is not to “grow a thicker skin” for research shows that likeability is more important for women than men when it comes to getting hired or promoted, Sieghart said, especially when a man is doing the hiring or appointing. “Women have to overlay warmth to avoid hostility,” Sieghart said, “a burden men don’t have to bear.” Male colleagues may not realise an authority gap exists because they are swimming with the current, Sieghart said. They see female colleagues struggling, swimming against the current, but may not understand why. And indeed, Sieghart added, women can share this unconscious bias too.

“This isn’t a women’s issue, it’s a human issue, and a societal issue,” she said. Authority gaps can be found in other contexts. “Women of colour find that even if they are completely brilliant and deserve a post people say ‘oh, she’s just a diversity hire’. How can you prove you are good enough if people are going to assume that about you? You get the racial stereotypes overlaid onto the gender stereotypes. If you speak up for yourself you could become ‘the angry black woman’.”

A gender pay gap will be sustained if you are not taking women as seriously as men, Sieghart said. “You are going to hire them less readily, promote them less fast, and pay them less…Women are 14% less likely to be promoted even though their performance evaluations are, on average, better,” she added. “Men are more likely to be described as brilliant or outstanding or talented, whereas women are said to be very hardworking, diligent, conscientious…nothing to do with innate talent, she just tries hard!”

Why should men care?

This is not about altruism, Sieghart said. “Gender equality is not like a see-saw, in which as women rise men automatically fall. It’s a positive sum game, not a zero sum game.”

And in business this is a performance issue, not a DEI issue. It hits the bottom line, Sieghart explained. Where the authority gap persists women will feel less valued, less engaged, more frustrated, and are more likely to quit. That costs businesses money.

In her work as a consultant Sieghart has found that most organisations want more women in more senior roles, but they focus all their attention on the women, as if they were somehow deficient, and they try to “fix the women”, she said. Assertiveness courses and empowerment initiatives barely move the needle. “Because the women come back to the exactly the same culture that was holding them back before,” Sieghart explained. “And if anything they are now more frustrated about it.”

“It’s not the women we need to fix, it’s the culture,” she said. “It’s how we all perceive and react to and interact with women that we need to fix. And crucially that means involving the men. Results are much better when men are involved.”

In her work Sieghart gets men to read out anonymised stories from their female colleagues, how they have been sidelined or ignored or patronised. “I ask them how they’d have felt if they’d been treated the same way,” she said. “You’ve got to engage hearts as well as heads to reduce bias. I ask them – how could it have been handled differently, and they say, well, we could have just listened to her in the first place! And that’s what the women say too.”

“The critical thing is to get the concept of the authority gap spread throughout the company,” Sieghart said. “So people can say – ‘that was an authority gap moment’. Take the emotion out of it. No-one’s being accused of being sexist. Name it, call it out, you can deal with it. Remind people at the start of a meeting, or check in at the end. It can become a habit. Put the empathy in. This is actually a useful tool to improve any team’s performance.”

There is a catch. “Because of the authority gap you often need a man to lead the change,” Sieghart said. “The male CEO needs to want to close the authority gap.”

Lastly, what advice did Sieghart have for women dealing with authority gap attitudes and behaviour? You are not being “difficult”, “prickly”, “over-sensitive”, or “paranoid”, she said, you are just responding to bad behaviour. Sieghart suggested trying to smile and ask “Could you let me finish?” But better is to recruit an ally who will speak up for you in meetings, noting your contribution and preventing you from being talked over. And avoid being the sole, token woman in a group!

What can we all do right now about the authority gap? As a first step recognise that most people have this unconscious bias. You can start to notice it. Stop mistaking confidence for competence. “Notice bad behaviour in meetings, what I call ‘conversational manspreading’,” Sieghart said. Acknowledge and support good contributions from female colleagues.

Dealing with the authority gap is not just a “nice to have” idea. “It is about performance,” Sieghart said. “There is a real bottom line impact. In the war for talent you have got to have more senior women, who in turn will attract younger women to want to join your company.”