0:01

Ted Audio Collective. A

0:07

while back. I was standing

0:09

in front of the podium in a

0:11

classroom preparing a lecture before my students

0:13

arrived, I was putting the slides up

0:16

on the screen when a prospective student

0:18

came up to me. They.

0:20

Asked me if I could give them

0:22

a heads up when the professor arrived

0:24

because they wanted to sit in on

0:26

the class. Of course

0:28

they were talking to the professor

0:31

of said class. But

0:33

they mistook me for May

0:35

I t. Or. A T A

0:37

or something. I. Don't know why. Maybe

0:40

it's because I look young. Maybe.

0:42

It's because I'm black. Maybe.

0:44

It's because I'm a woman or some

0:46

combination of all three. Whatever.

0:48

The case. I. Didn't square

0:51

with their vision of what a professor

0:53

should look like. You. Know

0:55

the stereotype. And old white

0:58

man with a grey beard and

1:00

glasses wearing a tweet blazer with

1:02

maybe. Patches. On the elbows,

1:05

I. Don't do tweed. Well, I don't

1:07

do tweed like that. The.

1:10

Thing is, I wasn't surprised when

1:12

this happened. Because the

1:14

same sort of thing happens to

1:17

so many educators I know and

1:19

others I don't know to all

1:21

because we don't look like the

1:24

older white says gendered man some

1:26

people expect at the front of

1:28

the classroom. And. After a

1:30

while. It. Gets tired,

1:34

So. We're here to ask

1:36

today. Why? Is it

1:38

that in Twenty Twenty Four,

1:40

we're still not all taken

1:42

as seriously as we deserve?

1:44

To be. Money.

1:49

Back in Nola, this is

1:51

tech, business or speaker. Today

1:53

is Mary and See Car.

1:55

She's had a long career

1:57

as an author, a broadcast.

2:00

There are any journalist today, She's here

2:02

to tell us all about the gendered

2:04

authority gaps and what we can do

2:06

to close it. Then

2:09

after the talk. I'll share

2:11

some findings on how to help

2:13

others close that gap. But

2:15

first a quick break. Support

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for Ted business come from

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Daily wherever you get your podcast. At

5:05

a conference a few years ago, a man asked

5:07

me what I did. And

5:10

I led a portfolio life, so I

5:12

just rattled off a list and I

5:14

said, well, I write a political column

5:16

for the independent newspaper. I

5:18

make radio programs for the BBC. I

5:21

chair a think tank. I sit

5:23

on a couple of commercial boards. I'm

5:25

on the council of Tate Modern and

5:28

I am on the content board of

5:30

Ofcom, our broadcasting regulator. To

5:38

which he replied, wow, you're a busy little

5:40

girl. I

5:44

was about 50 older than our prime

5:46

minister. Now

5:49

this is a classic example of what

5:51

I call the authority gap, the way

5:53

we still take women less seriously than

5:56

men. We're

5:58

still more reluctant to a quarter. authority

6:00

to women. We still assume

6:02

a man knows what he's talking about until

6:05

he proves otherwise, while

6:07

for a woman it's all too often the other way

6:09

around. Research

6:11

shows that men have six times

6:14

more influence in group discussions than

6:16

women. Women are

6:18

twice as likely as men to say they

6:20

have to provide evidence of their competence, or

6:23

that people are surprised at their abilities, and

6:27

women of color are much more likely than white women

6:29

to say this. If

6:31

you're working class or disabled, the gap

6:34

gets bigger still. Basically,

6:36

the further we are from the

6:38

white, male, middle-class default, the wider

6:40

the authority gap is. Now

6:44

I bet every woman listening has a

6:46

tale to tell about being

6:48

underestimated, ignored, patronized,

6:53

interrupted or talked over, challenged,

6:57

or mistaken for someone more junior, right?

7:01

In fact, it doesn't matter if you are a

7:03

president of a country, a CEO

7:05

of a huge corporation, or

7:08

a justice of the US Supreme Court.

7:11

Female justices get interrupted

7:13

three times more than male ones, 96% of

7:16

the time by men. If you still

7:20

need proof, though, a great test

7:22

is to talk to people who've lived as

7:24

both a man and a woman, because

7:27

they're exactly the same person with

7:30

the same ability, intelligence,

7:32

personality, experience, and

7:34

if they're treated quite differently after they

7:36

transition, that must be because of

7:38

their gender. A

7:41

scientist would say we've controlled for

7:43

all the other variables and isolated

7:45

the only one that matters whether

7:47

they're seen as male or female.

7:51

Now while I was researching the authority gap,

7:53

I came across two Stanford science

7:56

professors who happened to transition at

7:58

the same time in different... directions.

8:01

Ben Barrows, who was a neuroscientist, was

8:04

astonished by the difference it made to

8:06

his life once he started living as

8:08

a man. I've had

8:10

the thought a million times, he said,

8:12

I'm taken more seriously.

8:16

An academic who didn't know his history

8:19

was overheard after one of his seminars saying,

8:22

oh, Ben Barrows gave a great seminar today,

8:25

but then his work's much better than his sisters.

8:29

Right? Meanwhile, Joan

8:31

Rothgarden, who is an evolutionary biologist, told

8:33

me that when she was still living

8:35

as a man, she felt like she

8:38

was on this conveyor belt to success.

8:41

Her pay kept going up, she kept

8:43

getting promoted. When she spoke,

8:45

people listened. Once

8:47

she started living as a woman, all

8:50

that changed. So

8:52

she was interrupted, she was challenged,

8:54

she was personally attacked. She'd

8:57

make a point and no one took any notice until

8:59

a man repeated it. At

9:01

first, she said, I was amused. I

9:03

thought, well, if women are discriminated against,

9:06

I'm darn well going to be discriminated

9:08

against the same way. And

9:11

then she said, well, the thrill of that is worn off,

9:13

I can tell you. Her

9:16

conclusion, like mine, was that men

9:18

are assumed to be competent until they

9:20

prove otherwise, men are

9:22

assumed to be incompetent until

9:25

they prove otherwise. Now,

9:27

obviously, I'd like to do something about this,

9:30

but what's in it for men? Well, one of

9:34

the most encouraging things I found

9:36

while researching the authority gap was

9:38

that narrowing the gap isn't like

9:40

a seesaw in which as women

9:43

rise, men just automatically fall. I

9:45

mean, there might be

9:47

the odd occasion when if you're a man

9:49

in direct competition with a woman and the

9:51

bias against her is dissolved, she

9:53

might just beat you on merit. But

9:57

in almost every aspect of your life. Greater

10:00

gender equality is likely to make

10:02

you happier, healthier, and

10:04

more satisfied. There's

10:07

been some fascinating academic research

10:09

showing that both in more gender-equal

10:11

countries and US states, and

10:14

in more equal, straight relationships,

10:18

not only are the women happier and

10:20

healthier, which you'd expect, less

10:22

resentful, less exhausted, they feel

10:24

more part of a team, the

10:26

children are happier and healthier, they do better

10:29

at school, they get on much better with

10:31

their dads, they have fewer

10:33

behavioral difficulties, but

10:35

more surprisingly, perhaps, the men

10:38

themselves are happier and healthier.

10:40

So they're

10:42

twice as likely to say they're satisfied with

10:44

their lives, half as

10:46

likely to be depressed, they

10:49

tend to smoke less, drink less,

10:52

sleep better, take fewer

10:54

drugs, and here's the

10:56

absolute plincher, they get more frequent and

10:58

better sex. So

11:04

if it's in all our interests,

11:07

what can we do to close the authority

11:09

gap? Well, I counted

11:12

the other day, I've come up with 140 solutions. You'll be

11:18

glad to hear I'm not going to share them all with

11:20

you today, but I'm just going to

11:22

leave you with a few ideas to take away. Now,

11:26

I'm always asked, okay, so

11:28

what should women do? But

11:30

it's not women we need to fix, right?

11:33

It's how we all perceive and

11:35

react to and interact with women.

11:39

We need to make changes to ourselves, to

11:41

our workplaces, and to the world

11:43

around us. Now,

11:46

even women are biased against other

11:48

women. A

11:50

few years ago, in Britain, we

11:53

had female leader of a political party

11:56

who had a high voice and

11:58

sounded almost childish. And

12:01

when she came on the radio, I'd find

12:03

it quite hard to take her seriously. But

12:06

as soon as I had that reflex reaction,

12:08

I'd say to myself, stop it, listen

12:10

to the content of what she's saying, and don't

12:13

judge her by the pitch of her voice.

12:17

We all need to notice when our brains are

12:19

trying to trick us like that. It

12:22

can also help to flip things round,

12:25

to ask ourselves, hmm,

12:27

would I have thought that or said

12:30

that or done that? If

12:32

this person had been a man rather than a woman, would

12:35

I have mistaken that male CEO for

12:37

his assistant? Or

12:40

would I have called a 50-year-old man a busy little

12:42

boy? I don't think so.

12:47

When we're at work, we can actively

12:49

affirm what a woman says as long

12:51

as it's interesting. That

12:54

shows that even if women make up 40% of

12:56

a group, they're half as likely

12:59

as men to gain approval from it, and

13:02

much more likely to be interrupted. If

13:06

Evie makes a point at a meeting and no

13:08

one takes a blind bit of notice until

13:10

Peter repeats it 10 minutes later and

13:12

it's treated like the second coming, we

13:15

can say to Peter, oh, I'm so glad you agree

13:17

with what Evie said earlier. If

13:20

Peter interrupts Rosa. If

13:27

Peter interrupts Rosa, we can say, hang on a

13:29

minute, I was really interested in what Rosa was

13:31

saying there. And

13:34

what can employers do? Well, the

13:36

first thing they must do is to

13:38

make sure that they genuinely are hiring

13:40

and promoting on merit. One

13:43

study found that 70% of

13:45

men will rate a man more highly than

13:48

a woman for achieving exactly

13:50

the same goals. Women

13:53

with exactly the same qualifications as men

13:56

are 30% less likely to be

13:58

called for a job interview. If

14:01

you have only one woman on a short list, the

14:04

chances of appointing her are vanishingly

14:06

small because it's telling

14:08

us that men are the natural holders of this

14:11

job and that appointing a

14:13

woman would be risky. Adding

14:15

just one more woman to the short list

14:17

makes the odds of hiring a woman 79

14:19

times greater. Our

14:24

companies or employers can also

14:26

actively encourage talented women to

14:29

apply for promotion because

14:32

we are socialised to be

14:34

less confident and less self-promoting than

14:36

men. And

14:38

if we do act confidently, people often

14:40

don't like it and they

14:42

start calling us words like strident

14:45

or pushy. I

14:48

was caricatured for years in

14:50

Britain's satirical Private Eye magazine

14:53

as Mary Ann Bighead just

14:56

because I tried to seem as confident as

14:58

my male colleagues. And

15:00

that's why it's really important not to fall

15:02

for the confidence trick, to

15:04

mistake confident for competence

15:07

because they're absolutely not the same thing. An

15:15

academic paper unusually entitled Bullshitters,

15:17

Who Are They and What

15:19

Do We Know About Their Life?

15:23

found that teenage boys are significantly

15:25

more likely than girls to

15:28

pretend to understand mathematical concepts

15:30

that didn't even exist. And

15:36

this relative male overconfidence

15:38

persists into adulthood. So

15:41

if we take overconfident men at their

15:43

word, we're going to be much

15:45

more likely to hire or promote them, even

15:48

if they're nothing like as competent as

15:50

their female rivals. Now

15:53

representation matters everywhere, but

15:56

one place that could really make a dent

15:58

in the authority gap the media.

16:02

Because if it's sending

16:04

us the signal that men

16:06

are more authoritative, more expert,

16:08

more important than women, that's

16:11

just going to confirm our biases. At

16:14

the moment, men are three times more likely

16:17

to be quoted in news stories than women,

16:20

and twice as likely to be the

16:22

protagonist in movies. Now,

16:24

the BBC has recently made a push

16:26

to have 50% female experts

16:29

on air. And I

16:31

think that could make a real difference to the

16:33

next generation. Because

16:39

once we get used to seeing women as

16:41

authorities in public, we're going to

16:44

find it much easier to accord them equal

16:46

authority in our

16:48

daily lives. So

16:50

let's work together to close the

16:52

authority gap. We'll

16:55

all be happier and healthier, we'll

16:57

get more sex, and

17:01

the world will be a better place. As

17:04

Mary Maculis, the former president of Ireland,

17:06

put it to me so eloquently, if

17:10

men don't take women equally seriously,

17:13

then we end up with this world that

17:15

flies on one wing. And

17:18

that's our world slapping about

17:20

rather sadly, because

17:22

of the refusal to use the

17:25

elevation and the direction and the

17:27

confidence that comes from flying

17:29

on two wings. We

17:32

have to understand that when women

17:34

flourish and their talents

17:36

and their creativity flourish, then

17:39

the world flourishes and men

17:41

flourish. We all flourish.

17:44

Thank you. The

18:00

Singapore presentation is at 3am.

18:03

The office was shocked. I'm

18:06

so relieved. Maya

18:08

made it less scary with Canva.

18:11

I'll just record my presentation so Singapore

18:14

can watch it anytime. Record

18:16

and present anytime with Canva

18:18

presentations at canva.com. Designed

18:20

for more. That

18:24

was Mary Ann Seacart speaking at TED

18:27

Women 2023. Like

18:29

Mary Ann, I definitely

18:31

have first-hand experience dealing with

18:33

the authority gap. And beyond

18:36

that, the subject aligns with my research

18:38

interests too. In her book, Mary

18:41

Ann provides 140 solutions for

18:43

closing the authority gap. Well,

18:46

I'm going to offer another one. In

18:49

a recent set of studies I conducted with

18:51

two colleagues, Kiara Trombini

18:53

and Hannah Riley-Bowles, we

18:56

found that men who engaged

18:59

in self-affirmation interventions behaved differently

19:01

in negotiations with women than

19:04

men who did not self-affirm. Being

19:06

more attuned to their own feelings of anxiety

19:09

led men to behave more grounded in

19:11

these spaces. They were less likely

19:14

to challenge or react negatively

19:16

to so-called perceived dominant behaviors

19:18

exhibited by women in these negotiations

19:21

when the men got to reaffirm

19:23

prior to the negotiation. What

19:26

I like about this intervention is

19:28

that the onus isn't on women

19:30

in the workplace to somehow package

19:33

themselves differently. Making themselves

19:35

smaller, tiptoeing around the feelings

19:37

of their male counterparts. Instead,

19:40

it's about men addressing their underlying

19:42

feelings. And when that

19:44

happens, we can create

19:47

a more thoughtful and equitable

19:49

workplace. Diana

20:00

Kinji Ma, edited by

20:02

Alejandra Salazar, and fantastic

20:05

by Julia Ditterson. Special

20:07

thanks to Maria Lajas, Farah

20:10

DeGranz, Corey Haejim,

20:12

Daniela Balarrizo, and Michelle

20:14

Quint. I'm Madupa

20:16

Ekinola. Talk to you again next week.