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China Elevator Stories
Underestimated and Overlooked: The Authority Gap
Many women face discrimination due to the authority gap that exists between men and women.
01/10/2024
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
I have experienced many situations where I was not taken seriously and wasn’t believed when I told the truth, even though what I spoke about was what I had indeed experienced, and I’m sure that if you’re a woman, you probably have had this experience as well.
The Authority Gap: Why women are still taken less seriously than men, and what we can do about it by Mary Ann Sieghart talks just about this phenomenon. I have experienced both, certain women being believed more than me, and men being considered an authority when they weren’t, as well as women not being considered an authority when they were.
Mary Ann Sieghart writes:
“R.E.S.P.E.C.T is what the soul singer Aretha Franklin demanded, and it’s what women still have to fight harder than men to earn. However much we claim to believe in equality, we are still, in practice, more reluctant to accord authority to women than to men, even when they are leaders or experts.”
I have experienced men call me dumb, even though I am not, simply because I am a woman. Women are not born less intelligent than men, but I have come across this stereotype that women are less intelligent frequently these past few years.
Sieghart writes that many women share the experience I’ve had:
“Every woman has a tale to tell about being underestimated, talked over, ignored, patronized and generally not taken as seriously as a man. (…) Research shows that we still expect women to be less expert than men. Most of us – men and women – are still less willing to be influenced by women’s views. And we still resist the idea of women having authority over us. In other words, there is still an authority gap between women and men.“
Men have called me ‘beautiful’ and ‘sexy’ many times, both in the online, as well as the offline sphere, but only once was I called ‘intelligent’ by a man who wanted to get to know me. As a woman who is usually being reduced to her appearance by men, being called ‘intelligent’ is a nice compliment, but being called ‘beautiful’ and ‘sexy’ has become an annoyance, particularly because these compliments often came from men who wanted to have sex with me. Now, certainly, it is still better than being called a ‘whore’ and ‘ugly’!
Once, I was fired after reporting multiple instances of harassment by men at work. My boss, a man, became disrespectful and blamed me for the incidents. Before firing me, he would frequently meet with me for informal chats and stare at my breasts while doing so. I had to report him to his superiors for this behavior. Being fired simply for speaking up against male harassment is a bitter experience, especially when the harassment was real and undeniable.
Sieghart also writes:
“This sort of behavior is incredibly frustrating for women. No one likes to be treated as if they’re inferior, particularly if they’re not.”
My career, while also sabotaged by female co-workers, has been stalled by men who envied my success.
I don’t know many women who have experienced this personally but have read about other woman online who have experienced similar situations.
Sieghart writes about this phenomenon:
“And the authority gap is the mother of all gender gaps. If women aren’t taken as seriously as men, they are going to be paid less, promoted less and held back in their careers. They are going to feel less confident and less entitled to success. If we don’t do anything about it, the gap between women and men in the public sphere will never disappear.
The gap is both huge and unmerited. The difference between the amount that men and women are paid and promoted is fourteen times greater than the difference between their performance evaluations. This is because 70 per cent of men rate men more highly than women for achieving the same goals.”
Sieghart further explains how the authority gap exists in countries all over the world:
“The authority gap affects women all over the world, whatever the differences in culture. I’ve talked to women from Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, as well as from Europe and America, and they all say that they have experience of being taken less seriously than men. We might not notice that we interrupt them more, challenge their expertise more and listen to them less. But many of us do, and it’s both insulting and wrong.”
I have experienced this in Austria, but quite interestingly, I have experienced it to a much lesser degree in China.
In China, I was respected for the work I did in an advertising agency I worked for, even though my boss was a man. Not only did he cherish the work I did, he also encouraged me and invested in my talents.
In Austria, the experience I had was the opposite. In one of the companies I worked for, my boss ignored my skills and pretended they didn’t exist. I was always viewed as inferior, and though I didn’t actually have the skills I do have.
This is not to say that an authority gap doesn’t exist in China, it certainly does. But I have observed that many women in China are successful, are in positions of power, or do have their own companies, and that it is quite common and generally accepted when a woman does so, and not something that is considered odd or out-of-the-ordinary. It is an ingrained part of contemporary Chinese culture to see women as successful, able-bodied people who are just as capable as men to hold such positions.
Now, certainly, regional differences may exist and there may be differences between more urban and more rural areas, but this general attitude towards women in positions of authority or power in China was hard to overlook and my personal experience confirms this general approach.
I have experienced these negative biases towards me as a woman with strangers, former friends and family members alike. I have been through years of experiencing an authority gap that isn’t based on a real intelligence gap, but merely on how men, or in my case also women who are older than me, are perceived to be either more intelligent, more experienced or having more authority on a particular topic, even when they don’t. Usually, they simply think that they do, or claim that they do, when in reality they don’t.
Sieghart writes:
“For however progressive and intelligent we think we are, innumerable scientific studies show that we all – women as well as men – have unconscious biases, even against our own gender. We may not be aware of them – they are called ‘unconscious’ for a reason – but they spill out into our behaviour and, unless we notice and correct for them, we will continue to take women less seriously than men. We will continue that a man knows what he is talking about until he proves otherwise, while for a woman it’s all too often the other way around.”
When I was fired in one job, it happened on the same day that a male colleague, who constantly interrupted me while I explained new employees their work, went to our boss after I had asked the colleague to refrain from putting me down. He wouldn’t allow me to finish my sentences, interrupted me even though I was more knowledgeable on the topic, and insulted me before he then ran to our boss to complain about my behavior.
Sieghart writes about a woman called Alice, who has experienced similar situations:
“Alice, a 27-year-old engineer, told me: ‘When I’m leading a team, if there’s a guy in the exact same position, I get questioned a lot more. I have to fight a lot more for the same kind of authority.”
Often, I have found, a man question a woman’s authority not because she doesn’t have authority, but because she has more authority then he does and he feels threatened by that.
Sieghart says that women find themselves being patronized and underestimated. She describes what a woman named Flora experienced:
“I have to work harder than the males in the group do to put my point across. Especially in a group that is male-dominated, people tend to listen first to the men. If a man takes charge in a group scenario, they are often taken more seriously.”
The problem with this scenario is that not only men take men more seriously and regard them as the ultimate authority, but women do too.
I have grown up to see men and women as equals. I didn’t learn to think I was inferior to men, both in intelligence or in skills. But I have come to realize that there are many men who haven’t had that upbringing and that they still tend to treat women as though they are dumb when they are intelligent, simply because they are born a woman, or that they aren’t capable, even when they are highly talented. At the same time, these exact men may act as though they are highly intelligent, even when they are not, and extremely talented, even when they are not.
Have you experienced this authority gap?