The Authority Gap Consultancy

How do we get men to join the conversation about gender equality? Just ask the Dutch and the Scandis…

Why are women twice as likely as men to experience imposter syndrome? It's not because something's wrong with their silly little heads. It's because they're much more likely to be treated as imposters! If their expertise is disproportionately challenged, if their contributions in meetings are ignored, if they are frequently interrupted or talked over, if they're often mistaken for someone more junior, of course they're more likely to experience imposter syndrome. It is a rational response to being treated as if they don't belong or don't carry equal authority. These are all manifestations of the Authority Gap, and I'm grateful to Julie Radico Psy.D., ABPP for her piece, below, in Psychology Today, which points this out. So next time you inwardly judge a woman for not being confident enough, ask yourself whether it's her or the system that's to blame. And if you want to know how to close the Authority Gap in your organisation, get in touch with The Authority Gap Consultancy. We're here to help. #theauthoritygap #closethegap #impostersyndrome #confidence #genderequality

Our founding partner Mary Ann Sieghart addressed a packed room of insurance professionals last night at Marsh McLennan on the subject of the Authority Gap. There was a palpable buzz in the room and much conversation afterwards.

BREAKING NEWS! The FT’s Management Editor writes today that businesses need to close their Authority Gaps. “If organisations are committed to advancing women,” writes Anjli Raval, “they must go beyond simply increasing representation of women in senior roles. This requires a fundamental shift in how authority is recognised and respected. Until workplaces address this head-on, efforts to boost diversity will remain hollow, and some of their best talent may continue to walk out of the door.” The struggle to overcome gender bias and be taken seriously leads many to quit prematurely, she says. And she’s right. Our Founding Partner, Mary Ann Sieghart, is quoted in her article, saying, “If women are being routinely undervalued, underestimated, patronised, not listened to as much as men, interrupted or talked over more than men, [having] their expertise disproportionately challenged and . . . their authority resisted, then they are not going to progress at the same rate as their male colleagues.” Raval quotes stats from the Women in the Workplace 2024 report by McKinsey & Company and Lean In, which showed that, in the US, 38 per cent of working women encounter remarks or interactions that challenge their competence or undermine their leadership, versus 26 per cent of men who report the same. Around 39 per cent of women say they are frequently interrupted or spoken over, compared with 20 per cent of men. Additionally, 18 per cent of women have been mistaken for someone in a significantly more junior role in their organisation, compared with just 10 per cent of men. “Each of these actions dents your confidence,” says Sieghart. “Women are also going to feel less engaged and more frustrated in the workplace. Women who say they don’t feel included in the workplace are three times more likely to quit than those who feel included.” We are the only consultancy that actively helps organisations close their Authority Gaps. If you’re concerned about the broken pipeline of women in your organisation and you agree with the FT’s Management Editor, come and talk to us. Www.theauthoritygap.com

The reason we don’t have as many female managers as male ones is because they go off and have babies, right? Wrong. It’s happening much earlier than that. New LinkedIn research shows that women are less likely than men to be promoted to jobs that would lead to manager level right at the beginning of their careers - even though they’re entering the workforce with better qualifications than men. What’s more, there’s been a decline in the share of female managerial appointments in the UK, from 37.8% in 2022 to 37.1% this year. It’s not that we’re not making much progress: we’re actually going backwards! So what’s going wrong? Women are being undervalued. The study’s author, Sue Duke, points to two problems: 👉Women are under-mentored and under-sponsored compared with men. Which is another way of saying that senior men are more likely to bring on junior men who remind them of themselves when they were younger. It’s called affinity bias. 👉Unconscious bias in hiring and promoting. If you don’t train your interviewers and make sure you have balanced shortlists and balanced interview panels, men are more likely to be selected. It’s easy to understand why. Men are more likely to to be overconfident about their abilities and we allow them to self-promote. Women are more likely to be accurate or underconfident about their abilities and we dislike them self-promoting. So if we take people at their word when we interview them, we’re more likely to appoint the overconfident, self-promoting man, even if he’s less competent than his female rival. These are easy problems to fix. At The Authority Gap Consultancy, we can come in and look at the relative career progressions of your male and female colleagues and work out what the pinch points are and how you can deal with them. If you want to make the most of your talent and attract great new talent to your business, you need to close your Authority Gap first. Not only will that feed through to your bottom line, but it will make you more appealing as a workplace. Then you can become an Accredited Authority Gap Employer, attracting the best young women for you to promote in future. Find out more about our consultancy at www.theauthoritygap.com. #theauthoritygap #authoritygap #womenleaders #femaleleaders #genderbias #unconsciousbias #genderequality Steve Crook Nilema Bhakta-Jones (she/her) Tracey Gray Sam Plant Robert Baker Jeremy Stockdale Cindy Gallop Sharon Peake, CPsychol Harriet Waley-Cohen Gill Whitty-Collins

Our founder, Mary Ann Sieghart, had a fascinating fireside chat with Dena McCallum, Founding Partner of Eden McCallum, this week, in which they talked about the Authority Gap and its effect on the bottom line. The Authority Gap is the mother of all gender gaps. If we don't take women as seriously as men and underestimate their abilities, we're going to hire them less readily, promote them less fast and pay them less. So if you're worried about the lack of progression of women in your business or the size of your gender pay gap, you really need to close your Authority Gap. This will improve your performance, as you maximise the potential of your existing talent and make yourself a more attractive workplace for recruiting new talent. If you already know about the Authority Gap, but want to learn more about how we can help your organisation close it, you can skip to 28 minutes in the discussion. Read more about it and watch here https://lnkd.in/ddn3h8Rx #theauthoritygap #closethegap #genderequality #womenleaders

If you don't want to wait till 2061 to get gender parity among your top leaders, we can help you speed it up. Read more below...

Would you trust a man more than a woman to give you investment advice? I bet you’d say it wouldn’t make a difference. Yet our bias is so hidden, even to ourselves, that you may find it does. A new study examined over 7 million comments on 200,000 articles posted on the financial analysis platform Seeking Alpha, where people post their perspectives and predictions about the performance of stocks. “Although male and female contributors exhibit similar informativeness and skills, female-authored perspectives receive significantly lower engagement, lower trust, and higher disagreement from platform users,” wrote the authors. To assess engagement, the researchers analysed the comments associated with each article. On average, female-authored perspectives received up to 40% fewer comments than those by their male counterparts. Users were more likely to disagree with female authors and were more confident about their dissenting attitudes when commenting on female authors. Could it be that the female authors were less expert or experienced? No - the researchers controlled for all of these factors. As the authors explain, “Our tests directly control for relevant author, article and stock characteristics. In our most restrictive specification, we compare articles published by male and female authors on the same stock in the same quarter, and the results remain robust.” They even examined whether the ability to correctly predict stock movement played a role but found no gender differences in forecasting accuracy. This is a classic example of the Authority Gap: 👉Women are assumed to be less competent than men 👉Women’s views carry less authority than men’s 👉Women are assumed to be less expert than men 👉Women’s expertise is challenged more than men’s 👉Men are less likely to engage with women’s views than men’s As a result of this Authority Gap behaviour, female posters earned less from the platform than male ones, because earnings are based on engagement. You’ll probably find that a similar dynamic plays out at your place of work. This bias is so insidious and hidden that most people don’t realise they’re exhibiting it. At The Authority Gap Consultancy, we help organisations close their Authority Gaps by opening employees’ eyes to the ways in which their female colleagues are often underestimated, undervalued and undermined. Do get in touch if you think we can help you or your employer. #theauthoritygap #closethegap #genderbias #womenleaders Steve Crook Nilema Bhakta-Jones (she/her) Gill Hardy (she/her) Sharon Peake, CPsychol Robert Baker Tracey Gray Sam Plant Clare Woodman Jeremy Stockdale Gary Ford Lee Chambers Gill Whitty-Collins Avivah Wittenberg-Cox Helena Morrissey

How does the Authority Gap affect your board? Are female NEDs listened to as much as male ones? And are boards making sure that the culture of their business allows women to be equally heard and valued, so that the business’s performance is improved? All this and more in our Founding Partner Mary Ann Sieghart’s episode of Nurole’s Enter the Boardroom podcast, ably hosted by Oliver Cummings. Let us know here if you’ve had Authority Gap moments at work, either in board discussions or lower down the organisation. How have you dealt with them, and how could your workplace culture be improved? If you’d like to know more about how we at The Authority Gap Consultancy can help your business close its Authority Gap, get in touch or check out our website, www.theauthoritygap.com. You can listen to the podcast here https://lnkd.in/e9YTq25p. #genderequality #theauthoritygap #culturechange #womenleaders

We are delighted with the launch of our latest partnership with living-brands who have joined us on our important mission to close the Authority Gap. #CloseTheGap Our collaborative partnership has led to a proprietary diagnostic tool designed by living-brands which we will use to support organisations find out where and how the authority gap manifests, what countermeasures to implement using our expert training and tools. All which are formulated to close your authority gap, improve culture, team effectiveness and enable career progress for women and minorities. A win-win for improved business performance. #theauthoritygap #womenleaders Mary Ann Sieghart Karen Cooper