The Authority Gap w/ Mary Ann Sieghart
In this episode of Talk Nerdy, Cara is joined by journalist and broadcaster Mary Ann Sieghart to talk about her new book, “The Authority Gap: Why Women Are Still Taken Less Seriously Than Men, and What We Can Do About It.” They discuss gender bias in work, school, media, politics, and larger society, with an emphasis on power, class, and privilege. Follow Mary Ann: @MASieghart.
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00:00.00
talknerdy
Well Marianne thank you so much for joining me today I am excited to talk about your new book the authority gap why women are still taken less seriously than men and what we can do about it. This is a topic that is.
00:02.52
Mary Ann Sieghart
Oh thank you for having me on.
00:19.10
talknerdy
Mere and dear to my heart. Why? well because I am a woman First of all, um, I'm a woman who has worked in stem fields kind of across disciplines and then when I left stem I went into Broadcast Journalism and now I'm back in Academia and I have seen Good. God I've seen this in Action. So many times personally but of course in in research in talking to other women this is um this is a problem that does not seem to be going away.
00:46.93
Mary Ann Sieghart
I Know you know how much progress women are making this problem isn't going away and it's fascinating that you said oh my God you know I understand this so perfectly almost every woman I spoke to and I said that I was writing this book said Oh yes, you know story of my life.
01:03.42
talknerdy
in in 6
01:06.92
Mary Ann Sieghart
Almost every man I spoke to when I was writing this book said really? ah.
01:11.46
talknerdy
It reminds me of like when the me too movement really started gaining steam. There were all of these men that I've talked to and they'd be like this is horrible I can't believe this is how what is good I'm like you realize this has been happening this whole time. You're only just now aware of it.
01:24.40
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah that's right and you know the funny thing is that so the authority gap is all about how women's authority is challenged so much more than men and how we're much more reluctant to Accord Authority to them and we challenge their expertise all this sort of thing we'll go into all this I'm sure. But what made me laugh was that when I told men that this was the book I was writing actually to be fair about a third of them said oh that's interesting and asked intelligent questions just like you or I would to anyone else writing a book but the other 2 thirds split into two so half of them.
01:51.50
talknerdy
M.
01:59.96
Mary Ann Sieghart
Would start mansplaining to me from a position of complete ignorance. What my book ought to be about and the other half told me that my thesis was completely wrong or it was out of date and basically I'd got it wrong and why was I writing this book and I thought do you not appreciate the irony.
02:03.91
talknerdy
Ah.
02:18.51
Mary Ann Sieghart
You are displaying the very behavior that I'm writing this book about while denying that the phenomenon exists ah exactly exactly. Ah.
02:20.49
talknerdy
Ah, you're like um, do you mind if I record this please I'm just going to turn on my my Recorder Oh gosh. Yeah, this is um, it's pernicious. It's it's everywhere right? This is not something that only exists. In the sciences that only exists in the c-suite that only exists in Broadcast television. This is something that exists in basically every industry unless I guess we could say the industry is lucky enough to have been an an industry where women. Have long held power. But honestly I work now I move from neuroscience to Psychology Neuroscience Very male. Although you know getting Better. It's not as bad as computer science or or you know physics. Um, but Psychology is predominantly female the discipline like most of my colleagues are women but but. Still at the highest levels of power. It's mostly men.
03:20.90
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, and this happens so much even in female dominated professions that men just sort of Rise to the top like cream on milk. It's extraordinary. You know you see this in teaching. For instance, you know men make up ah ah, a minority of teachers but a disproportionate percentage of head teachers.
03:28.33
talknerdy
Nothing.
03:39.14
talknerdy
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely anybody really in administration. Anybody who has power right? and who makes more money and who you know has a stake in the outcomes for other people. So I have to ask before we even dive into you know the research and and sort of some of the most I guess salient.
03:39.50
Mary Ann Sieghart
Principles I think you call them.
03:44.20
Mary Ann Sieghart
Right.
03:58.13
talknerdy
Points in the book. Um, what was there something personal that drew you to write this was it something that just you know obviously you have eyes and you have ah a heart and a brain so you could see that this was a pernicious problem that you know seems to be intractable. But was there anything that really drew you to say I'm going to spend a lot of my life on this.
04:19.32
Mary Ann Sieghart
Well I've actually spent most of my life being a political journalist first of all a business and then mainly a political journalist and and a columnist. Um, mainly on the times in in London and I have always had this sort of idea in the back of my mind I've quite often written. Feminist columns I also helped to set up an organization called women in journalism ah more than twenty years ago in the yeah Uk but I guess I probably felt that I had to earn my spurs in the male part of journalism.
04:42.47
talknerdy
M.
04:53.14
Mary Ann Sieghart
The more traditionally male part of journalism which is both business and political journalism before anyone would take me seriously enough to be able to write this book. So it's sort of Qed isn't it. It's actually proving the very point of the book. But yes I mean all my life I've been infuriated when people have patronized me or.
05:01.70
talknerdy
Right? right.
05:11.87
Mary Ann Sieghart
Underestimated Me interrupted me talked over me ah challenged my expertise were resistant to me being in a position of Authority you know these are all instances of of behavior that arises because of the Authority gap and it's always annoyed me. It's probably annoyed me since I was a child actually. So I suppose it was sort of a culmination of a life's frustrations. But but I also think I suppose this was a good time to write the book because I feel these things a bit like me you mentioned me too earlier. These things are now being talked about at last and women are thinking.
05:37.46
talknerdy
M.
05:46.47
Mary Ann Sieghart
You know I'm mad as hell I'm not going to put up with this anymore.
05:47.57
talknerdy
Yeah, yeah, it's true and and as you mentioned you know a third of the men that you talked to either were were um, authentically curious or were had feminist views as well and and probably that good I mean I want my male friends to hear this. I want more people to know what I see because I don't know I see it at work or because you know my wife comes home dejected after after a long day and tells me about all the terrible things she had to withstand. Um I do think that we're starting to see at least a growing movement of men. Who are on sort of the right side of history.
06:26.40
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, and don't We love those men I mean we really noticed we really notice and really appreciate it when a man treats us with the same sort of respect that he treats men listens to us just as attentively as he does to other men.
06:30.38
talknerdy
Yes, but.
06:43.20
Mary Ann Sieghart
Doesn't talk over us interrupt us or ignore our views we we notice we care. We love it. We appreciate it and I think those probably are about a third of the men I come across and I've worked with some of them as co-workers as colleagues had them as bosses and they're great and then there's another perhaps third of men I'm not being very scientific here I'm talking anecdotally.
07:02.78
talknerdy
E.
07:03.60
Mary Ann Sieghart
Ah, the other end of the spectrum who are not just unconsciously biased but consciously biased and genuinely believe they're superior to women. They're the dinosaurs. They're probably not going to read my book and I'm probably not going to convert them. But I think there's this really interesting group of men in the middle. The sort of. Independent voters as you might say who aren't actually malign to women but in their behavior they display this sort of behavior and probably don't even notice they're doing it So you know a man talks at a meeting and they listen carefully a woman starts talking and they check their emails on their phone or.
07:30.39
talknerdy
Write.
07:38.60
talknerdy
Yeah.
07:41.22
Mary Ann Sieghart
They take up just too much of the conversational time often at the expense of a woman but they don't notice that they're just holding forth and she's struggling to get a word in edgeways. So as I say they're not actively malign. But I think if they were more aware of what they were doing. They might genuinely want to change their behavior and if that's the case then you know.
07:56.82
talknerdy
Yeah.
08:00.57
Mary Ann Sieghart
Then we're going to end up frankly with 2 wo-thirds of men on the right side and the dinosaurs being marginalized and that's what I'd really like to see I think it's a bit like racism ten or twenty years ago you know when you might have had a group of white people in a room and one of them felt able to make a casually racist joke right.
08:04.91
talknerdy
Oh gosh. M.
08:17.26
talknerdy
Yeah, right right? unless they were among white. Yeah, unless they were among a safe group of white supremacists just like now. Yes, like we want to get to the point where it's like we're all sexists here. We can speak freely right.
08:19.98
Mary Ann Sieghart
They wouldn't do that now. Thank goodness because the other other people would say hey stop it I'm not having that I would like exactly yeah.
08:35.22
Mary Ann Sieghart
Ah, yeah.
08:35.80
talknerdy
Like Wow Wow, but it's True. It would be so great to see that that shift because so often so often I think that group in the middle does um make themselves a parent and I've personally experienced this multiple times whether it be through. Comments on my work on the internet that um, almost seem like compliments but are that are clearly veiled and when I do take the time which I don't always do because who has the bandwidth for that. But when I do take the time to say you may think that that is a compliment but I'm going to tell you why that's actually quite offensive. Um, I've very often will get responses like oh my God I had no idea like I had you know, saying things like for example, Wow, you're You're very attractive and intelligent. What a great you know I can't believe women and it's like holy shit like there are a lot of them. There are most of us. Um, like you know what are you doing.
09:22.58
Mary Ann Sieghart
Fall. Ah, it's yeah me.
09:31.74
talknerdy
Um, and then also I think we see a lot of this like benevolent sexism where it's sort of like but I'm just being helpful and it's like no no, no, you're not.
09:34.45
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yes, yes, funnily enough Julia Gillard who was prime minister of Australia told me I interviewed a lot of very very senior and authoritative women by the way in the course of researching this book as well as some who weren't but.
09:46.91
talknerdy
Mean.
09:52.77
Mary Ann Sieghart
And the reason I did was because I thought if even these women if even these former prime ministers and presidents supreme court justices bishops generals movie directors. Whatever if even they have experienced the authority gap that is pretty good evidence that the rest of womankind is likely to have done too. You know if they haven't even been insulated from it. And Julia Gillard said exactly that she said when she was prime minister. She would go into a group of men and they might have been you know security chiefs or they might have been heads of ceos of companies and they'd say oh it must be so hard being prime minister. You know I sort of I really feel for you and and she thought now hang on a minute. I'm here to talk about national security or the economy and ah you may be thinking you're being kind and polite. But actually I don't think you would have said that to a male prime minister. You know let's just let's just talk about national security can we and she said it was a bit like a bit like a sort of uncle to to a niece.
10:39.64
talknerdy
Of course, not Wow right.
10:50.60
Mary Ann Sieghart
That sort of rather revuncular slightly patronizing benevolent sexism. Yes.
10:53.50
talknerdy
Oh gosh and it's just it's just everywhere and it's reinforced and so let's talk for a second about the actual like the title of your book the authority gap what is that referring to specifically.
11:08.52
Mary Ann Sieghart
It's measuring the extent to which we are still prepared to take men more seriously than women we're still prepared to accord more authority to men than to women. So I sort of say in Layman's terms we assume a man knows what he's talking about until he proves. Otherwise. Whereas for a woman. It's all too often the other way around and so women are twice as likely as men to say that they have to prove evidence. They have to provide evidence of their competence and actually women of color are nearly twice as likely as white women to say that say the authority gap's wider still for.
11:27.26
talknerdy
You.
11:34.97
talknerdy
Oh.
11:43.64
talknerdy
Um, and so you know you you mentioned that it really is the measurement in many ways kind of the the science of this of this distinct gap and of course as as a journalist who you know really does your due diligence. This is a very researched topic for you. So.
11:43.86
Mary Ann Sieghart
For women of color.
12:02.83
talknerdy
Um, so tell me there is a significant amount of science reinforcing This is not just like some anecdotal observation.
12:08.26
Mary Ann Sieghart
Oh no. So I'll give you perhaps 3 or 4 studies if you're interested so okay, randomized um control double-blind trial sending applications for a lab manager position to american professors.
12:12.43
talknerdy
Absolutely.
12:24.73
talknerdy
I Think it was I think it was yours no worries it happens even when you are on do not disturb something always manages to slip through.
12:26.78
Mary Ann Sieghart
I'm sorry to stop there was that my pinging or yours because I thought I was on mine. Okay sorry I thought I was on do not disturb. But I'll turn it on. But yeah, do me? Yeah, sorry about that I I was as Well. So I don't know what that pinging is anyway right? Thank you So There was a randomized double blind controlled trial sending.
12:47.39
talknerdy
That's quite all right.
12:55.25
Mary Ann Sieghart
An application for a lab manager position and a Cv resume to science professors at top us universities and the materials were absolutely identical but they were randomly assigned male or female names and.
13:04.34
talknerdy
Mm.
13:11.52
Mary Ann Sieghart
The so-called Male candidate was significantly more likely to be hired deemed more scientifically competent and the professor said they were more interested in collaborating with him than with the so-called woman and this was both male and female.
13:26.81
talknerdy
Right? This is an important point. Yes, this is an important point that we have internalized these sexist ideals so much that we as women actually espouse them.
13:27.86
Mary Ann Sieghart
Science professors because women are all so biased against women. Sorry yeah yeah.
13:39.19
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, so I think we can perhaps come to that later because I just want to give you a few other examples. Um, so one of the classic symptoms of the Authority Gap is men interrupting women and it's one of the most annoying ones because.
13:43.25
talknerdy
Sure sure yeah.
13:55.19
Mary Ann Sieghart
It suggests First of all that what he has to say is more interesting than what you've got to say and it is actually silencing you and even really authoritative women are not immune from this so there was a fascinating study done only a few years ago very recent of. Us supreme court proceedings and you don't get much more authoritative than being a us supreme court justice and women make up only a third of the justices but they suffer 2 wo-thirds of all interruptions so they are 4 times more likely to be interrupted than their male colleagues.
14:20.13
talknerdy
Mm.
14:25.30
talknerdy
Ah.
14:31.41
Mary Ann Sieghart
90 nety-six per percent of the time by men.
14:32.18
talknerdy
Oh Wow So this and this isn't you know some laboratory experiment. They're looking at transcripts of actual proceedings.
14:37.96
Mary Ann Sieghart
yeah yeah I think I ah um I think it was 10000 hours worth it might have been 15000 guys but a lot yes transcripts of a lot of us supreme court proceedings and then and another study I like ah oh actually I'll tell you one that made me laugh.
14:43.42
talknerdy
Wow. Oh.
14:56.45
Mary Ann Sieghart
This is about speaking time what I call Conversational man spreadading you know men just taking up disproportionate amounts of speaking time. Um, this is a slightly old one but I don't think things have changed much in this regard. Certainly not Anecdotally and.
14:58.50
talknerdy
Ah.
15:10.41
Mary Ann Sieghart
Frankly, every single academic study shows men talking more than women at least in public settings such as meetings and educational establishments and parliaments and that sort of thing and so men and women were given 2 paintings by dura to look at and they were each given a tape recorder and asked to talk for as long as they liked about these paintings. The women talked on average for 3.17 minutes the men talked on average for 13 minutes in other words, 4 times as long that even this wasn't accurate because 3 of the men were still talking when their 30 minute cassette tapes ran out.
15:46.69
talknerdy
And these are just random people. They're not like art critics. Ah.
15:46.85
Mary Ann Sieghart
Ah, ah, um, yeah, no these random people. Ah but then and another I think more serious one is about influence and I think a lot of women have come across the phenomenon of making a point at a meeting.
15:56.97
talknerdy
M.
16:04.29
Mary Ann Sieghart
And for no one asked to take a blind bit of notice until a man makes the very same point 10 minutes later and it's treated like the second coming and women will beat themselves up about this and think oh maybe I wasn't confident enough or maybe I wasn't articulate or eloquent enough and the answer is no. They were just too female because. What this study did was it put actually a mixed gender group of people together ostensibly to decide a child custody case and they deliberately chose this subject because it's actually quite female stereotyped you expect women to be good at it and they gave the group all sorts of information about the family concerned. But they gave a few individual members a piece of information that none of the others had and when that information was introduced by man it was 6 times more likely to be used in the group's deliberations than when it was introduced by a woman 6 times. That's how much harder it is for a woman to influence a group even when it contains.
16:54.60
talknerdy
Wow.
17:01.59
Mary Ann Sieghart
Women as well as men.
17:01.60
talknerdy
Ah there's there's so much like consilience happening in my mind right now because last week on the show I'm doing some time travel because it hasn't been posted yet. But by the time the show is posted. It will have been last week I had um. Ah, professor a social psychologist Dr. Tessa West on the show. She wrote a book called jerks at work and she kind of classified different archetypes of like toxic co-workers you know everything from sort of the the kiss up to the to the gaslighter and sort of anything in between and. We talked about this very phenomenon because I recalled there being a I don't know if it was like a press release. But there was coverage during Obama's administration of an initiative wherein cabinet meetings basically important high level meetings that were mixed gender meetings. It was um, kind of the policy to whenever a woman spoke and gave you know a new idea that other individuals in the room would echo that idea you know, um, Janet's idea blah blah blah let's make sure that we talk about what Janet just said.
18:05.21
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yes.
18:11.72
talknerdy
Because unless we amplify those voices. Um, we can't counteract this this Authority gap.
18:18.22
Mary Ann Sieghart
That's right, it was actually the women on his team got together to devise what they called this amplification strategy because they realized individually. They just weren't being listened to by the men and it and it did work. But you know they had to make this special effort can I Just talk though about another way of proving the Authority Gap exists and.
18:23.91
talknerdy
It's nice. Oh yeah.
18:35.56
Mary Ann Sieghart
I Found this completely fascinating. It sounds anecdotal but in lots of ways. It's really scientific. Normally if you are a woman and say you are up against a male co-worker for a promotion and he gets it and you don't.
18:39.96
talknerdy
M.
18:52.51
Mary Ann Sieghart
And you may suspect that bias was at play. But it's terribly hard to prove. It may be He's just better than you the way to measure this is to look at people who have lived as both a woman and a man and see how life has changed for them because in that case, you're talking about exactly the same person. But the same ability the same intelligence the same personality the same experience the same body of work and if they're treated completely differently once people see them as female rather than male or the other way around what you've managed to do is to control for all the other variables and isolate the one that matters which is gender. And so I'm going to tell you the story of 2 Stanford Science professors who happened to transition in opposite directions at the very same time. Ben Barris was a neuroscientist and once he started living as a man he said I've had the thought 1000000 times I'm just taken more serious.
19:38.54
talknerdy
Okay.
19:50.15
Mary Ann Sieghart
Now my work's taken more seriously the same damned work as he put it is taken more seriously now that people see me as a man and someone who didn't know his history was overheard at the back of 1 of his seminars saying ah Ben Barris gave a great seminar today. But then his work so much better than his sister's.
20:08.65
talknerdy
Wow Wow! wow.
20:09.77
Mary Ann Sieghart
I e his own work right? And meanwhile yeah meanwhile Joan Roughgarden is an evolutionary biologist and she transitioned to start living as a woman and she said when she was living as a man she was she just felt like she was on this conveyor belt to tenure and to success.
20:20.57
talknerdy
So.
20:29.26
Mary Ann Sieghart
Um, life was really easy for her. She spoke people listened her work was taken seriously her peer reviews were good and she said once she started living as a woman all that changed and she started experiencing exactly this sort of behavior that.
20:39.51
talknerdy
Yeah.
20:46.24
Mary Ann Sieghart
I Write about you know she said she couldn't finish a sentence without being interrupted by a man all the points she made had to be affirmed by a man before anyone else agreed with them and she said to start with I thought well if I'm going to live as a woman I'm dar well going to be discriminated against like a woman and then she says well the thrill of that's worn off I can tell you.
21:01.93
talknerdy
Right? Ah, oh gosh.
21:04.76
Mary Ann Sieghart
And what really what really bugged her was how much she was attacked personally and she said before she had some quite sort of outspoken views in evolutionary biology but people only attack the views and not her and she said once you.
21:19.82
talknerdy
Right? There weren't ad hommonyms that were like lodged. Yeah yeah.
21:23.43
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, ad VEdFeminine yeah so you know she said people would say things to her like you haven't read the literature and she said no one ever said that to me when they saw me as a man and her conclusion was men are assumed to be competent until proven otherwise and women are assumed to be incompetent.
21:42.25
talknerdy
Oh yeah, I mean in this.
21:42.33
Mary Ann Sieghart
Until they prove otherwise and actually much sorry much bigger studies by sociologists of Trans men and Trans women have found exactly this phenomenon that Trans men in particular say hey this is fantastic being man life is just so much easier. It's amazing.
21:50.13
talknerdy
Yeah.
21:58.17
talknerdy
Yeah.
22:00.14
Mary Ann Sieghart
And of course vice versa. You know Trans women say Gosh I Just didn't realize the extent of sexism until I started being at the butt end of it.
22:06.17
talknerdy
Ah, and of course this is this is something that has happened throughout all of human history. But this new sort of I shouldn't say new but the literature is probably just finally starting to catch up to um. Gender differences not just between men and women. But of course or cisgender men and women. But of course also looking at the entire gender spectrum and I guess I was under the impression that and not to like be talking about the oppression olympics or anything like that. But that it was almost. Worse you know, similar to women of color are dealing with an even larger Authority gap that Trans perhaps Trans women maybe not Trans men are also dealing with like an even larger Authority gap especially in situations in which their gender status is is like known. That individuals know that these are transgender women. Yeah, it's true.
22:54.97
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yes, but the but the point is the asymmetry isn't it. You know if if we were just if we were just um, biased against Trans people we would show it for Trans men as well. But we don't they actually get a leg up and Trans women you know a leg down.
23:04.26
talknerdy
Um, yeah, right? Ah what a I mean I think back to these like old studies about purchasing cars. Do you remember this like classic study where they looked at.
23:18.67
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yes, I mean only I fun enough only yesterday I had to take my car to be serviced and I said it's my husband. You've got to come with me or they're going to rip me off and I used to be motoring correspondent.
23:21.37
talknerdy
Yes, yeah, no black man black woman.
23:29.72
talknerdy
Ah, oh my God Oh my Oh how frustrating I mean and of course this is something that as you mentioned you've had personal experience with throughout your life of course now for this book. You've done super deep dives and and looked at the literature that aligns with this personal anecdotal experience.
23:35.12
Mary Ann Sieghart
I know.
23:49.55
talknerdy
But you have to have had you know pretty frustrating run-ins in in a very sort of male dominatated Journalistic world.
23:56.79
Mary Ann Sieghart
Oh Yes, yes I mean I've put a few stories in the book. Um, 1 in 2 of them was I was at a conference and it was sort of quite a high level conference and there were only delegates there not spouses and in the evening I was sitting next to a male delegate and he asked me what I did. And I led a portfolio life and I genuinely didn't know which of them would interest him most so I just ran through and I said well I write a political column for the independent and I make programs for Bbc Radio 4 and I sit on a couple of corporate boards and I chair a think tank and I'm on the council of tape modern gallery and I do some charity work.
24:31.34
talknerdy
Yeah, just that just a few little things here there. Oh my God Oh oh my God That's so disgusting. Oh my.
24:35.45
Mary Ann Sieghart
Wow He said? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know Wow He said you're a busy little girl. A little girl I was older than the then Prime minister. Ah, it really is isn't it.
24:50.94
talknerdy
Ah, and the gall to just say that with like a big like Shitty Grin on your face too like just no awareness of how insulting that is wow.
24:54.43
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, yeah, exactly and then and then when I told him how insulting it was I mean I gasped and I said God I didn't think I've been called a little girl since I was about 6 and and I remember it really annoying me even then and he said oh no, they just. Just being flattering just a compliment. No I'm sorry that is not a compliment.
25:13.57
talknerdy
Right? Of course of course. Ah, and that's sort of that minimization right? and this is I think such an important point that you make in the book and such an important point for us to talk about because. I see very often whether we're talking about the authority gap whether we're talking about racism whether we're talking about transphobia one of the sort of alternative talking points. 1 of the arguments against the um understanding that this is such a pernicious issue is. This question of like well what are you saying just that every man every man is like a born sexist and so I think this conversation about what systemic sexism actually means what does it mean for something to have become institutionalized is an important conversation to have. Because it's very easy to flippantly say oh you know you're just blaming men for the whole world's problems. What is it actually like why is it this way. How did it get this bad right.
26:13.88
Mary Ann Sieghart
Ok, well of course Millennia of patriarchy you know right up until now and including now but less than it used to be men have been in charge and all religions pretty much have have told people that men are superior to women. So you know we've had a lot of history of this and we have all the evidence now showing that except you know in in tasks that involve a lot of strength men are not superior to women and our iqs are identical except at the very far ends of the iq spectrum. And you know women are every bit as competent as men. So we we now have the scientific evidence disproving old-fashioned prejudice but we still harbor these very old-fashioned outdated and inaccurate stereotypes somewhere in the darkest recesses of our brains and as a result for instance.
27:02.40
talknerdy
Yeah.
27:06.65
Mary Ann Sieghart
Ah, there was a study and academic study which asked parents to estimate their children's iqs and they estimated their sons on average at 115 which in itself is pretty funny because the average ought to come out at a hundred right? Anyway, their sons on average at 115 and their daughters at only 107
27:10.24
talknerdy
E.
27:18.90
talknerdy
Right.
27:26.10
Mary Ann Sieghart
Despite the fact that girls develop faster than boys that they do better at school than boys. They have a larger vocabulary than boys but still parents are acting oh genuinely believing. It seems that their sons are cleverer than their daughters and as a result boys are bound to subliminally absorb this notion that they're cleverer than girls and girls.
27:37.75
talknerdy
Wow.
27:45.68
Mary Ann Sieghart
Going to absorb the notion that they're less clever than boys and so the same study actually asked adult men and women to estimate their own iqs and the men estimated themselves on average at 110 and the women at 105 and yet their iqs. We know on average are identical and this sets in really early in life.
27:46.86
talknerdy
Right.
28:04.98
Mary Ann Sieghart
So there was one great study which looked at five six and seven year olds it asked them all sorts of questions. So one of them was they said ah, there's this coworker of mine who is really really smart and can solve all sorts of problems and which ones do you think they are and showed them photos of men and women and at the age of 5 girls chose a woman and boys chose a man by the age of 6 and 7 boys were still choosing a man and girls were also more likely to choose a man and then they were asked to. But first of all to choose teammates for a game for really really smart children and both girls and boys by the ages of. 6 and 7 were starting to choose boys rather than girls and also their boys were more likely to say they wanted to play this game than the girls were and then they were asked. Did they want to play a game where the kids had to try really really hard and the girls were more likely to up for that and to choose female teammates for that.
28:51.29
talknerdy
He.
29:01.20
talknerdy
Right.
29:02.98
Mary Ann Sieghart
So you know we are indoctrinating them with this notion that girls are just sort of you know, diligent and conscientious but boys are brilliant at the age of 6
29:10.94
talknerdy
Yeah, and clearly there is a shift where you know the the socialization becomes more and more apparent where it doesn't quite stick as much even though we know there's an effect even in in sort of genderizing babies right? from the time they're. Born If We you know, utilize certain types of language and dress them a certain way that we're sort of influencing their their thoughts and their feelings and their behavior but clearly something is happening as these children are developing theory of mind as the children are thinking about their place in the world where there's a shift in their confidence. And there's a shift in their identity. Um, ah, kind of around that age of like kindergarten.
29:52.21
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yes, I mean there's 1 interesting study for instance, um, which gave I think it's from six month old babies all the way up to kindergarten age to two and a half or 3 offered them 2 identical toys 1 in pink and one in another color. And babies and and young toddlers would just sort of choose pink 50% of the time you know as you would expect randomly by the age of two and a half girls were jumping on the pink about they chose pink about 80% of the time and boys were completely rejecting it which just shows that's a sort of age at which you start to.
30:23.50
talknerdy
Yeah.
30:28.42
Mary Ann Sieghart
See the outside world I guess um and and start to associate girls with pink and and and boys definitely not with pink something really depressing I found was um when I think it was boys who about 7 might be slightly older I can't remember sorry um were asked. What was the best thing about yeah I think it was middle.
30:28.60
talknerdy
And you want to act in such a way that yeah and and it.
30:42.78
talknerdy
Ok. Yeah, yeah, although I think by set I think it's 7 you're still ah in elementary school. Okay, yeah, so maybe like pre preteens like like ah eleven twelve year olds
30:47.38
Mary Ann Sieghart
Middle school boys. Do you call them in America anyway, yeah, ah okay, sorry it might have been middle school boys anyway, um, yes, exactly preteens and they were asked. What's the best thing about being a boy and the first was. Sport and the second was not being a girl? Yeah, ah yeah, really grace.
31:08.60
talknerdy
Ah.
31:15.60
talknerdy
Oh My God and of course I mean this goes to show. Ah this is the sad thing too like and this is me sort of armchair psychologizing this but it goes to show that just like with the with the choosing you know the certain colored toy or. You know saying I don't you know I'm just glad I'm not a girl that it's It's partially about ok I now am a being in the world and I can sort of compare myself to the norms of the world and reflection. But it's also a big part of it is like I want to please the the stakeholders in my life. Want to please my parents right? That's what little kids do little kids want their parents to say I'm proud of you and to give them hugs and to tell them that they're doing well in the world and sadly it goes to show that not just in the media but actually within our own family Structures. We are reinforcing that boyhood. Is something to aspire to and girlhood is something to be ashamed of.
32:14.44
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, and of course you know we praise boys for being instrumental and girls for being ornamental. You know we we see a little girl and say how pretty she is how pretty her dresses. We see a little boy and we say Wow you're really good at football you know and.
32:27.94
talknerdy
Right? yeah.
32:30.80
Mary Ann Sieghart
And and that and that teaches them that you know, but for boys they can do things in life and that's what people are going to appreciate them for whereas for girls I Just expect it to look good and how tragic is that park Tara Sorry before we go on. Would you like me quickly to look up the study and find out what age boys they were who said? yeah, okay.
32:42.57
talknerdy
Mm and of course that just.
32:47.33
talknerdy
Oh you can sure if you'd like to I'll make a note of course. Yeah I mean how could you? um while looking up the study just making a note for the editor.
32:50.85
Mary Ann Sieghart
Won't take me a second. So I've got most of these onto my tongue but not tongue. Yeah sadka I think ah. When you talk to thirteen two
33:24.27
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, it was middle school boys so you can keep it in. Yeah.
33:26.70
talknerdy
Okay, great, good. Great. Yeah, that's awesome. Um, so I'm gonna pick it up as if you just finished what you had just said Um, ah okay here we go and of course but sure sure. Ah.
33:33.27
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yes, actually before we do I'm just going to pour some water because I will make an noise.
33:44.20
talknerdy
And I always keep a big carafe on my desk as well and I podcast so often I have to tell people I'm not taking a bio break. Um, okay, and of course this parallels sort of the the ancient and modern history of.
33:44.53
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah ahead. Okay, there go.
34:02.57
talknerdy
Sadly, um, forced gender roles and I think this is something that we sanitize so often and we see this obviously with with like racial and ethnic studies. But we absolutely see it with with gender studies is that we sort of. Sanitize history and talk about it as if it was just like it's like today but like things were a little bit different and what we don't often reinforce and I think it was quite shocking for me to really wrap my head around it and maybe it's because I was raised quite religious. Maybe it's because I was raised in the south I was raised in Texas where the textbooks really are heavily sanitized and and sadly don't really reflect reality but you know historically and to some extent today in certain cultures and societies women were legitimately treated like chat or we were chattel.
34:54.12
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah.
34:56.15
talknerdy
Like we were. We were so slaves we were sex slaves we were not expected to work except for domestic unpaid Labor. We were expected to birth and mother. Um and we did not have. Any power and so just like you were talking about where men are sort of the strong competent and women are the ornamental because our entire worth was based on how sexualized we were how much does a man want to have sex with me if he wants to have sex with me I might have status later in life if he doesn't I'm. Probably just going to be a surf.
35:29.97
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, that was exactly it and you know thank God we've got a very very long way from that. But we're really still not there and that's really the point I'm making um, it's a very contemporary book because we all know that history was sexist. You know the past has been sexist but I think a lot of people believe and particularly a lot of men believe.
35:35.67
talknerdy
Right.
35:49.97
Mary Ann Sieghart
Oh we got over that now we live in a gender equal world. Let's just move on and I'm saying now hang on a minute we haven't.
35:54.00
talknerdy
Right? And I think it's actually both I think that a lot of people don't want to know how bad it really was back then and so they sort of rewrite history in their minds that yeah it was sexist but like you know wasn't that bad. It's like no, we're talking about sex Slavery violence.
36:10.71
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah.
36:12.77
talknerdy
We're talking about like some of the most horrific abuses you can imagine were just commonplace. This was just the norm and then when we look at how things are today. It doesn't as a woman of course it doesn't surprise me that it's not where it should be and so not only are the sort of people who hold power. Able to rewrite history and sanitize it. But they're also able to look dead in the face of of modern society and say oh, it's not that bad.
36:39.17
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, and actually it's not that long ago certainly in the U K that rape in marriage was legal or that women couldn't take out a mortgage on their own they had to do it with their husband Even if they were earning you know their own income This was in living memory.
36:53.30
talknerdy
Oh god and and here in the us and I don't know if it was like this in the UK too but I remember coming across laws that if a woman was raped. It was a crime against her husband not against her and so the man would take the other man to trial. Yeah.
37:05.21
Mary Ann Sieghart
Ah, ah, Wow whoa.
37:12.91
talknerdy
Yeah, like because it somehow sullied her place as as the wife right? not and it had nothing to do with whether or not you know she was traumatized by it like this is the world we live in. Wow yeah.
37:15.60
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, yeah, it's his honor. Yeah it his honor and you know you still get that in some South Asian societies that you know is male honor is prioritized over female safety or even lives sometimes.
37:31.42
talknerdy
Right? with honor Killings Absolutely within within somebody's own family and of course these are horrific and vile descriptions. But I think it's so important and you talk about this so well like these things directly relate to what we're talking about not being able to have enough time to speak.
37:35.00
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah.
37:50.12
talknerdy
Being mansplained to not getting a promotion making ¢70 on the dollar of a man like there's a direct line between this horrific violence and femicide and and these more sort of. I Guess we could say benign but absolutely not benign experiences of of modern women in in more progressive societies.
38:13.90
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yes, and also isn't it interesting that the backlash against gender equality is so violent so you know you look at so women are 27 times more likely to be abused online than men. This was an academic study where they put um you know fictitious people into internet forums.
38:19.17
talknerdy
Write.
38:32.24
Mary Ann Sieghart
Saying exactly the same thing and when they're assigned a female name. You know they think 27 times more abuse than men. Um, and when you look at the rape and sexual and death threats that women get for speaking up in the public sphere they are just horrendous.
38:32.58
talknerdy
Noon.
38:36.24
talknerdy
Yeah.
38:51.46
Mary Ann Sieghart
And I really mean horrendous. So ah, most of them don't get published because they're too shocking and then people say oh well the women should grow thicker skin and they have no idea what these women are being threatened with I mean I print I printed just about 20 of them in my book. So that people could realize what was happening and these were ones sent.
39:00.59
talknerdy
And when we do publish. Good.
39:09.67
Mary Ann Sieghart
So we have a young feminist in in the u k called Caroline Criado Perez and she started up an incredibly innocent campaign simply to get 1 woman on 1 of our banknotes. You know the equivalent of a dollar Bill. So all of our banknotes had had um, famous men on them and not a single woman and she just said.
39:13.67
talknerdy
Mm.
39:28.54
Mary Ann Sieghart
May we please have Jane Austen on the next iteration of the £10 note and she had over one weekend. She collated two hundred a four pages worth of violent threats that she had to give to the police simply for asking Jane Austen to be on a banknote.
39:42.80
talknerdy
Um, yeah I mean I can I That's the sad thing I can.
39:47.91
Mary Ann Sieghart
You imagine and and yeah and you know most of them were related to silencing her you know I'm going to stick my cock so far down your throat that you're going to gag I'm going to cut your head out I'm going to cut your tongue out cut your head off cut your tongue out you know? ah.
39:58.31
talknerdy
Yeah.
40:04.74
talknerdy
Yeah, and sadly when we do speak up like I remember you know I've gotten obviously death threats and rape threats and things like that when I do Youtube videos I don't actually have a Youtube channel but I've gone on a lot of other people's Youtube channels in the video I mean the the comments on Youtube are.
40:06.98
Mary Ann Sieghart
Really humble.
40:23.15
talknerdy
Probably the most vile, but definitely there are forums I do 1 podcast where it's me and 4 4 men and so um and it's quite a kind of intellectual podcast. So I'm always amazed when there are these like very kind of I don't know adolescent. Ah, violent threats. But I remember very specifically one where I made some comment about we were arguing about colonizing space and I am usually on the side of guys that you know the word colonization right? There should tell you something and and you know we don't want to to you know this has a really.
40:53.21
Mary Ann Sieghart
With it.
40:58.89
talknerdy
It's fraught historically and I don't want to see us doing exactly the same thing in space that we've done to indigenous peoples all over the country and so I'm making this argument and the guys you know I don't want to say it's falling on deaf ears. But they're they're very like we're explorers you know and so we're kind of arguing about this and.
41:09.60
Mary Ann Sieghart
Me.
41:14.56
talknerdy
There's a comment in in the forums That's literally like I don't know why the men didn't just like bend her over and rape her right there and yeah and so and and of course like some men were quite defensive of this and were like oh my God I can't believe this but when I quoted this when I took an image and quoted it online.
41:18.67
Mary Ann Sieghart
Oh god.
41:34.42
talknerdy
Like I sometimes will do in social media and say like seems like a nice guy. You know like I'll try sort of brought draw attention to this plight. But also say you know you don't have power over me like I'm you know I the amount of yes some people are like this is disgusting I can't believe this is happening I'm so sorry.
41:36.22
Mary Ann Sieghart
Was nothing happening me.
41:43.44
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah.
41:53.15
talknerdy
Other people are like you know they pile on which is extra disgusting but I would say that the middle road is so often men telling me then what I should have done about it. Don't feed the trolls Kara or you need to not let this get to you or and I'm like you realize this is.
42:04.30
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, right.
42:12.39
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
42:12.75
talknerdy
Almost as bad, you telling me how I'm supposed to handle my own threats to my safety my own shaking of of my sense of you know, ah that risk of violence like this is and this is a daily occurrence I think for a lot of women, especially those.
42:31.92
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, and they're trying to impose a tax on speaking in the public sphere basically on women. Um, but you know quite often. It just helps to flip things round. Um, you say to a man. How would you feel if you appeared on an intellectual podcast and you had an interesting intellectual conversation.
42:32.61
talknerdy
Who work in media.
42:36.75
talknerdy
Right? right.
42:51.29
Mary Ann Sieghart
And people were posting underneath. He needs a steal rudge shoved up his ass. You know how would you actually feel if someone said that and if they then said and if they yeah, he's just ridiculous Just we just laugh because of course it wouldn't happen to a man but I think that? Yeah yeah, the whole thing is ridiculous.
42:55.15
talknerdy
Yeah, can oh my God Can you can you imagine.
43:04.57
talknerdy
Yeah, it's ridiculous. Wow it's It's so far fetched. But.
43:10.26
Mary Ann Sieghart
But then also but then also how would you feel if that person said I have your home address and I'm coming around at Eleven o'clock tonight to do it and that also happens. Yeah well yes, publish your home address. Yeah and the sad thing is as you say about Youtube it's not even just.
43:16.20
talknerdy
Oh for sure. Yeah, or if they doxed you publicly. They said this is her home address. Oh my god.
43:28.84
Mary Ann Sieghart
It's not even just women in public life who get this which they do I mean boy, do they get it but you can get a 13 year old girl putting up a Youtube video about braiding her hair and she'll get a rape threat in the comments underneath and you just think how sick do you have to be to do that.
43:33.67
talknerdy
Yeah.
43:39.34
talknerdy
Yeah, yeah, absolutely and and and what does it actually do psychologically to that person and you know that's not to say that somehow I'm impervious. I think I'm sort of used to it and I think I've sort of like developed good coping mechanisms and good skills and because I'm trained as a psychologist I think that I you know am lucky I have the privilege of sort of being able to do a lot of that self-work I cannot Imagine. You know when I was 13 We did not have the internet the way it exists now I cannot imagine how detrimental this is to the mental health of young girls. It's really hard to to wrap our heads around exactly what it does to somebody's you know, sense of identity and I mean.
44:16.97
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, yeah.
44:29.36
talknerdy
I guess it's not that hard because it's just a new iteration of what we were just talking about has always been the case right? used to be. They would just say it out loud. It's worse now than it was twenty years ago but I don't think it's worse now than it was two hundred years ago right
44:33.12
Mary Ann Sieghart
But I think it's hard I think it's worth yeah, but in some senses. It's exactly no no, that's true. But what's worrying here in the U K and I suspect it's happening in the us too is that there's quite a lot of grooming. Of young boys pre pubescent and adolescent boys in really extreme misogyny so in the map from the manosphere which are these sort of very extreme sometimes incels ah sometimes white supremacists. They are often tied up together these extreme misogynists.
44:55.13
talknerdy
Oh yeah.
45:08.56
Mary Ann Sieghart
And they are grooming these young boys via Youtube via computer games. But you know via quite innocent channels to believe these terrible things about girls and women and teenage girls certainly here in the u k are starting to suffer from this so they start speaking out again even in quite a mild way.
45:17.61
talknerdy
Right.
45:27.68
Mary Ann Sieghart
In favor of equality that you know the boys will turn around and call them feminarses and you know even worse and so they're also being silenced and I rather naively naively had thoughts that things were gradually on. Ah you know, getting. Better and that we're on this ah sort of progressive upward path towards equality I'm slightly worried now that this backlash might stop. It.
45:48.37
talknerdy
Right? that there is this sort of um, extremist yet. Sadly very um I don't want to say mainstream because it is still extremist this sort of like insel movement. But it's very um, accessible. That's the thing.
45:59.76
Mary Ann Sieghart
Um, oh yes, yeah.
46:06.48
talknerdy
Like you said like they're they're being groomed out of very accessible channels and of course it's the most vile version of a message that in its water down form is pretty um is pretty ubiquitous and that really I think brings us to such an important. Important point and I'm I'm I'm recalling. Maybe you remember several years ago a woman was raped I can't remember she may have been murdered but definitely raped in in a public park in Australia I think it was and there was a massive backlash because the police chief got on the news. And was like women you need to be aware of your surroundings women. You need to make sure that you carry your keys you know like a shiv or whatever he said and like don't wear revealing clothing anver everybody is like are you fucking kidding me like he did not den out. He didn't ever go men. You need to not rape you know and.
46:47.19
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, yeah.
46:53.41
Mary Ann Sieghart
Men. Yes.
46:57.93
talknerdy
And it reminded me of I don't know if you've seen on on our showtime I don't know if you guys have access to showtime or if it's called something different. But um, there's a documentary about Bill Cosby like we need to talk about Cosby and there's ah, an an incredible um I think she's a psychologist or sociologist.
47:08.22
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah.
47:16.75
talknerdy
Um, ah, kind of feminist studies and it's it's towards the end of the documentary when ah W Kamau Bell asks almost everybody who sits for the documentary a question like have you ever had a violent threat against you. He's asking all the women right? or have you ever dealt with sexism have you ever dealt with um. Rape or or harassment and every woman is like of course yeah of course yeah, me, yeah, personally, but also my mom also my friend and then the woman turns it on her ear which was very um, ah illuminating she was like everybody loves to ask that question and they never turn to the men and say have you ever raped somebody have you ever harassed a woman.
47:50.50
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah.
47:53.54
talknerdy
When's the last time you were inappropriate with a woman in your life. Why is that why don't we hold their feet to the fire instead. We talk about how victims can unvictimize themselves.
47:54.57
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, yeah.
48:01.68
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, and we talk about violence against women. It's male violence against women. We're not beating each other up are we or raping each other.
48:06.70
talknerdy
Yeah, exactly exactly.
48:13.00
talknerdy
Yeah, yeah, So what? like I feel like this you know this extreme example which relates back to the Authority Gap you know now I think we're in that we're sort of in the the closing portions of the podcast where we go. Okay, so what? the hell do we do about this right? like it's.. It's a sad thing and it's a horrifying thing We can't just let it keep happening.. There's got to be ways that we can affect change. But I think these things relate right? like both this like male violence against women and also this male power over women.
48:35.59
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, but they.
48:43.70
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yes, and you know so much that is written about women and about sexism advocates fixing women. Okay and they say you know women, you've just got to be more confident. You got to lean in go on an assertiveness training course and what I write about. Is that this isn't going to help. It's not the women who need fixing. it's it's us it's the rest of us. It's how we react to women how we perceive women how we behave with women how we interact with them. That's what we need to fix all of us women as well as men because. If women start to behave exactly like men and start to be as confident and assertive as men actually that doesn't help either because we quite often recoil and we start using adjectives about them such as abrasive or strident aggressive bossy overbearing bitchy ballbreaking. You know. If we say a man a a male Ceo is tough that means we admire them if a woman Ceo is tough. We're going to dislike her and that's because we still have these incredibly old-fashioned out of-date stereotypes of lurking in our brains that tell us that women need to be gentle and kind and warm and nurturing and.
49:43.71
talknerdy
Yeah.
49:59.22
Mary Ann Sieghart
Unassuming and unthreatening and uncompetitive and unassertive whereas men need to be confident and assertive and show leadership and that sort of thing and so when women start to behave in the way that they have to behave in order to be taken Seriously, we dislike them.
50:13.87
talknerdy
Um, yeah.
50:15.84
Mary Ann Sieghart
So either they are not confident enough and they're therefore disrespected or they are confident enough and they're disliked and this is really difficult for women because actually you could say well growth thick a skin who cares if you're light. Well actually it matters a lot much more for women than for men when it comes to hiring and promotion.
50:21.40
talknerdy
Yeah.
50:35.31
Mary Ann Sieghart
Likeability is a huge factor for women, you won't be hard or promoted if people don't like you particularly if if it's men doing the hiring So We have this incredibly sort of narrow path to navigate between being underconfident and being supposedly overconfident and. The only way to get through that actually is to overlay an enormous amount of warmth onto our personalities so that we smile a lot and we use humor to deflect any sort of hostility and we have to be incredibly emotionally intelligent and read the room make sure we're not treading on any men's toes. You know.
51:11.26
talknerdy
Oh yeah, we're constantly massaging egos. Yeah.
51:11.76
Mary Ann Sieghart
This is exhausting and it's a burden that men don't have to bear. Yeah, and you know it's a burden that men don't have to bear and it's something that some women aren't particularly good at and why should they be so again, it's we're almost sort of imposing a tax on women's success. We're just making it much harder for women to succeed than for men to succeed.
51:19.94
talknerdy
Yeah.
51:28.16
talknerdy
Oh absolutely have you seen these cartoons by um, Mary Catherine Starr they're so brilliant they're they're really about parenting but they I think they exemplify exactly what we're talking about There's like a cartoon of ah. A man coming home with a bag of fast food and a woman coming home with a bag of fast food and it's like lazy mom fun dad or you know they're walking the stroller down the street but they're also looking at their phone. He's a present dad. She's an inattentive mom or they're picking their kid up from school and they're wearing a suit.
51:50.75
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yeah, yes, yeah, right? yeah.
52:03.61
talknerdy
He's an involved dad but she's a working mom you know and it's just this horrific double standard because our our standards are so low for men.
52:04.82
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yes, ah.
52:11.49
Mary Ann Sieghart
Yes, that's right men are allowed to fail fail and fail again aren't they we can only fail once and if we do fail. It's taken as a sign that the entire you know the whole of womankind is unable to achieve this so there was a great story told to me by a british cabinet minister female called Amber Rudd
52:15.33
talknerdy
Yes, yes.
52:30.93
Mary Ann Sieghart
And it was well up then prime Minister Theresa may was having problems trying to get Brexit through parliament and and it looked like she might face a leadership context contest and a male conservative Mp ah, you know colleague of Amber Rudd came up to her and said oh just so you know Amber if there's going to be a contest. Really like to back you and she thought oh great I'll you know, notch him up and then he said but I think we've had enough women for now. Ah so you know one woman fails at something and that means that half the population is ruled out of doing it ago.
52:52.93
talknerdy
I Hear Yeah god.
53:03.83
talknerdy
Oh yeah, it's like when when Ruth Bader Ginsburg when they said what is equality on the supreme court look like to you and she was like when they're all women and people were aghast. They were like all women that's insane. She's like why is that so weird. It's been all men. They're like most of american history like equalities when we can stack the court.
53:11.83
Mary Ann Sieghart
If ah.
53:18.43
Mary Ann Sieghart
I.
53:23.71
talknerdy
Um, you know it's not fifty fifty like we got to swing the pendulum a little guys. Um, but people yeah, it's I mean people were like they lost it when she's at that like oh a me too.
53:30.49
Mary Ann Sieghart
But actually you know I I'd settle at fifty fifty fifty fifty is fine for me that just means we're all treated equally. That's fine. That'll do I don't need female supremacy I just want to be treated fairly.
53:42.40
talknerdy
Right? right? And so you know that that really I guess as we start to really wind down I'm wondering if there's any advice that you have for the men who are listening to this podcast specifically I think most of the women listening are just like nodding vigorously and saying yes yes, all these things. Yes and I'm trying I'm really trying. But is there any advice you might have for the men listening who say yeah I'm with you and ah you know even though I have the privilege of not feeling these things all the time when you talk about them. It resonates and I want to help I Want to be a part of the solution. Not the problem.
54:13.22
Mary Ann Sieghart
Oh yes, please please come and help we would be so appreciative because the tragedy is I mean what I'm writing about in the book is that men are much more likely to listen to other men and so if you start acting as allies to women other men are more likely to listen to you So yes, please.
54:23.70
talknerdy
Right.
54:31.46
Mary Ann Sieghart
Please call out sexism in allmale groups. You know when men feel they've got a license to be sexist say actually no I I really don't feel comfortable with you saying that if you see a woman being treated in one of the ways in which I've described you know being interrupted at a meeting say you can say oh hang on I was really interested in what Kara was saying there or suppose.
54:38.67
talknerdy
Yeah.
54:51.40
Mary Ann Sieghart
A woman makes a point and no one takes any notice man makes the same point later you can say oh I'm so glad you agree with what Kara said earlier you know all these things you can really help us with you can check your own bias. You know so suppose you are deciding to mentor someone or sponsor someone in the organization who's younger than you.
54:56.60
talknerdy
Yeah.
55:10.31
Mary Ann Sieghart
Don't automatically pick a young man who reminds you of what you were like at that age but choose a young woman instead. Ideally a woman of color actually because they're even less likely to be mentored than a white woman. There were oh honestly in the in the last chapter of my book I have 140 solutions I counted them the other day and.
55:15.78
talknerdy
Yeah, absolutely.
55:26.52
talknerdy
Yay! ah.
55:28.26
Mary Ann Sieghart
And the reason and you know it's It's what we can do as individuals as partners as parents as co-workers as employers as in Media teachers I go on on and the reason there are so many is that every instance of the Authority Gap is quite small at the time I mean it's very annoying to be interrupted and not to be able to get your point across, but it's not.
55:47.29
talknerdy
Mean.
55:47.43
Mary Ann Sieghart
You know career threatening but it's the accumulation of them. They roll up like compound interest over the course of a lifetime to create this enormous gap in achievement and opportunity between women and men and so the solutions are also small and I think it's really important. All of us met women as well as men to just to appreciate that we do suffer from unconscious bias against women however liberal or intelligent or even female we are. We're likely to have this just because of the way we've been brought Up. We've talked a lot about upbringing. And the world in which we live in which there are many more men still in positions of Authority. So There's nothing we can do about it. It's called unconscious for a reason but we can and we don't need to feel ashamed of it either. It's not our fault but we can notice it when it manifests itself and try to correct for it. So You know if you're a man.
56:36.65
talknerdy
Yeah, yeah.
56:40.78
Mary Ann Sieghart
Just make sure you're listening as attentively to women as you are to men make sure you're not taking up more than half the conversational time if you're talking to a woman or whatever the proportion is according to the number of people in the room if you walk up to a man and a woman standing together don't automatically address the man First if a woman. Sounds like she's pretty knowledgeable about a subject that is traditionally quite Male. Don't just assume that she isn't to start challenging her. You know there are just there are hundreds of things that men can do to make life better for women and you know what it is genuinely in their interest and that sounds weird because you might Think. Gender equality is like a seesaw in which as women Rise men fall and there may be small occasions individual occasions in which if you are up for a promotion or a job and a similarly qualified woman is to and the bias against her Disappears. It may be she gets the job rather than you. Which may well in fact, be fair, but in general academic studies show that both in more gender equal countries and us states by the way and in more gender equalqu relationships straight relationships that is in which the man and the woman share the chores and the childcare roughly equally. Not only are women.
57:46.71
talknerdy
E.
57:55.60
Mary Ann Sieghart
Healthier and happier which you might expect children are ah healthier and Happier. Do better at school have fewer behavioral difficulties get on much better with their dad.. The girls are more ambitious boys are less likely to be violent but the men themselves are also happier and healthier so they are twice as likely to say they're satisfied with their lives. Half as likely to be depressed much less likely to get divorced on average they drink less they smoke less. They take fewer drugs. They sleep better at night and here is the absolute clincher. They get more frequent and better sex. So yeah, what is not to like about this.
58:30.36
talknerdy
Amazing I love it I love it. Well Marianne I you know I close every episode by asking my guest the same 2 questions. It may be that you've already answered these questions because of the topic at hand it may be that you have a different answer on the tip of your tongue.
58:33.93
Mary Ann Sieghart
Ah.
58:49.14
talknerdy
So I'm going to throw some big kind of big picture questions at you are you ready for them all right? So when you think about the future in whatever context is relevant to you right in this moment so this could be regarding the topic. We've been discussing regarding your work your family or personal life.
58:52.28
Mary Ann Sieghart
I Hope so I.
59:08.29
talknerdy
But it could also be at the community level the national level the global level even the cosmic level um number one. What is the thing that does keep you up the most at night the thing you're most concerned about um maybe you're ah dealing with some pessimism bordering on Cynicism. And then on the flip side of that to end on a slightly more positive note where are you finding your optimism these days where are you having sort of authentic and genuine. Ah, hope.
59:36.65
Mary Ann Sieghart
What keeps me up at night at the moment is world war three I mean boy.
59:40.16
talknerdy
Right? Oh god yeah yeah, we are recording this on. Let's see Wednesday March second so we're like in the middle of the UKUkraine crisis with no real understanding of where it's going to go? yeah.
59:51.65
Mary Ann Sieghart
With people like Fiona Hill saying Putin might well use nuclear weapons I mean this is very scary particularly living on the continent of Europe that's what's keeping me up at night at the moment. Ah beyond that what am I optimistic about I guess I'm optimistic. That's because of the reaction to this book I mean.
59:58.86
talknerdy
Yeah.
01:00:11.16
Mary Ann Sieghart
People are getting almost evangelical about it just going. Yes, yes, we've really got to change this. This is a really important thing this will change so many women's lives and some men are also joining in which I'm absolutely thrilled about um one Amazon reader said that she had put the audio. Version of the book on on a long car journey with her husband and she said it has transformed him he is listening to me now he's asking me questions and frankly if I can change one husband at a time I will be a very happy woman.
01:00:34.11
talknerdy
Ah.
01:00:43.23
talknerdy
Ah, absolutely oh gosh all right? Well the book everyone is the authority gap why women are still taken less seriously than men and what we can do about it by Marianne Seagart Marianne thank you so much for being here.
01:00:58.76
Mary Ann Sieghart
Oh you're welcome. It's been a real pleasure talking to you? Thank you.
01:01:02.19
talknerdy
And thank you to everyone listening I'm really looking forward to the next time we all get together to talk nerdy.
