In 2021 I was working 60 hours on a good week, so I wasn’t paying much attention to great books being published. For that reason I missed Mary Ann Sieghart’s The Authority Gap: Why Women Are Still Taken Less Seriously Than Men, and What We Can Do About It.

I recently finished it and, while I wouldn’t say its conclusions are revolutionary to me, the way she has marshaled evidence from all over the world for her propositions is. As you read the book, you may start to think that maybe you aren’t as crazy as you previously thought. I found that I had to read one chapter of the book at a time because I’d be filled with rage after reading each one.

There’s so much in the book that I’ve decided to take several Comes Now issues to address some of its subjects. In this issue I want to talk about Chapter 5, called The confidence trick: Confidence is not the same as competence, where Sieghart talks about why women are so often perceived as being less capable than men—at virtually everything—and what we can do to overcome it.

Beyond Imposter Syndrome

While I admit to having had times where I was waiting for people to figure out that I’d ended up in a certain place by mistake, I’ve never liked the phrase “imposter syndrome” to describe those feelings. After all, suggesting that women have a “syndrome” means that there’s something wrong with the women who feel that way.

Sieghart makes clear that women often lack confidence not because there’s something fundamentally wrong with them, but instead because of the way others perceive them. Perhaps, she posits, it’s not that women lack confidence, but that “they’re not as full of bullshit” as men are. p.84

Study after study shows that, while women’s intelligence is consistently underestimated, men’s is overestimated. As just one example, Sieghart cites a study where men and women were asked to refer people for one job that required high-level intellectual ability and one that required someone who was motivated. The researchers found that the odds of referring a woman rather than a man were 38% lower for the job that demanded serious intelligence, and that women were just as biased as men. Given this persistent “mandermining,” as Sieghart calls it, it’s no wonder that women feel less confident than men.

Brilliance Is Male

Throughout high school and college I considered “brilliant” to be the ultimate compliment. It conveyed intelligence, originality, and insight—all things that, as a young reader and writer, I longed to have. I specifically remember the thrill of getting back a paper I’d written for my college Classics professor that said: “Absolutely brilliant!” I felt I’d made it.

But what I learned by reading The Authority Gap is that there was likely good reason that I craved that particular attribute. I was an avid reader who wanted to become the world’s greatest editor and, back when I was in school, that meant I spent thousands of hours reading books written by and about white men.

As it turns out, brilliance is typically a characteristic assigned to men, not women. The results of an Implicit Association Test, which sought to measure implicit bias, found that both children and adults, male and female, from countries all over the world, associate “brilliant” much more with men than women. Indeed, “brilliant” was second only to “strong” in its association with male. These results explain why women in economics, philosophy—and law (ahem)—where brilliance is often prized, feel less confident in those fields.

Being Modest and Well-Behaved

Sieghart then talks about how, because girls are expected to be quieter and better behaved, teachers don’t challenge them as much in school. In addition, boys are taught early on that they can succeed in school with little or moderate effort—which allows them to “build their belief in their abilities" and grow increasingly at ease relying on them. p.92. But if girls coast by in school without much effort, they are assumed to be lazy.

In contrast, if men are modest, we think they are charming and self-deprecating—and therefore must be better than they claim. If women are modest, we take them at their word. Of course, if women aren’t modest, we’re penalized for self-promotion.

In short, we are terrible at distinguishing competence from confidence. In his book Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?, psychologist Tomas Chamurro-Premuzic concluded that, even though arrogance and overconfidence are inversely related to leadership talent, we are fooled into believing that men are better leaders than women, simply because men are confident. Yet if women act more confident, they will be disliked—and consequently not hired or promoted.

As Sieghart says, “[w]e have to find a way of admiring and cheering on powerful women so that they can do good in the world. While we continue to feel queesy about them wielding authority, the gap will never close.” (p.100)

The Effects on Risk-Taking

Sieghart writes, how, when she interviewed hundreds of successful women all over the world, she found that over and over again women sought to overcome their lack of confidence by putting in hours and hours of preparation to be sure of their ground. That preparation, in turn, gave women confidence.

I adopted this technique in my legal career. I said to myself repeatedly that while a (usually male) colleague might be perceived as more dynamic or brilliant than I was, no one would be better prepared than I was. I used to watch one particularly talented former partner in the courtroom and was regularly blown away by how confidently he could assert things I knew he lacked proof were true. Oddly enough, that tendency never seemed to have consequences for him. While I’d always tell a judge that I’d get back to him or her with authority for a proposition, this partner would unabashedly assert that the authority existed. No one ever called him on it.

Being over-prepared sounds like a great coping technique until you realize that it makes you risk-averse. If you don’t think that you can speak unless you’re an absolute authority on a topic, you’re less likely to assert yourself in the first place. If you don’t think that you can raise your hand to do something unless you have weeks to become an expert, you’re more likely to hide in the background. And, although you can overcome this, you’re more likely to look robotic and formal if you rely on excessive preparation. Men often seem more dynamic because they’re winging it, and they are comfortable doing so.

Closing Thoughts

Sieghart’s chapter makes clear that, when it comes to conveying confidence, women can’t win. No matter the approach we take, we lose. What needs to change, of course, is the perception—by men and women—of men’s and women’s confidence.

Sieghart ends the chapter on confidence with a battle cry that I’m sure will appeal to every woman lawyer:

More on The Authority Gap next week. The last chapter of the book is entitled “No need to despair,” so we will eventually be talking about ways we can start to change what she talks about. Stay tuned!

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