Authority Gap - Mary Ann Sieghart

[IamAporcupine]

I am attending a talk by Mary Ann Sieghart entitled 'The gap authority gap, why women are still taken less seriously than men, and what we can do about it."

Some interesting facts:
All audience is female (n=87)
17 have she/her in their zoom signatures
One of Sieghart first sentences was: '...and by women I mean anyone who presents as one.'

Happy to take suggestions for the Q&A

Ffs. Ask her to start by defining her terms...

what does 'presents as a woman' mean?

@ArabellaScott

what does 'presents as a woman' mean?

Pip Bunce doing womanface.

Honestly, don’t let the trans issue detract time from the important business of helping women overcome this issue. Use the time for good, for us.

If 'woman' is a mere presentation, is it no wonder that they are taken less seriously than men?

Ask whether she thinks transwomen have more authority than natal women (bring up international women of the year, older transwomen being able to compete in women's sports when women of the same age would not be able to etc...) and why she thinks that might be.

It was also interesting that her very first example to 'prove' that women are indeed taken less seriously, was to use the case of transgender men and women.

By "present as a woman" does she really mean how you choose to present yourself or how you are perceived ?

Just thinking I can wear all make clothes , hair cut etc , I can stand and talk assertive, but no one would ever see anything but a female form

I'd be interested in the what can we do about it part.
Fwiw I doubt transwomen experience this in exactly the same way.

Take in pics of all the bearded transbians and ask how we can tell them difference between these women and men.

Ask if we can’t tell the difference then how is she measuring the authority gap?

How do people know which women to take less seriously when so many women look like men (as in the pics of the transbians)?

And how do people know how to take transmen and female non binary people as seriously as other men?

I’d be very interested in her answers. Don’t let her disrespect the stonewall trans umbrella, that would be transphobic of her.

Ask her if she'd advise that you stop "presenting as s woman". Ask if transmen have greater authority than women.

The tec frontier is to create virtual meeting spaces etc.
This allows the individual uses to adopt non-biological / virtual characters which can not be accurately used to determine the sex or gender presentation of the authority figure.
Q: in this virtual environment would it be possible to differentiate and measure the authority gap using the recent trend of adding sex/gender identifiers?
Would you expect to see a different response to the authority role if the virtual character identified as she/her rather than he/him?

@PaleGreenGhost

Ask her if she'd advise that you stop "presenting as s woman". Ask if transmen have greater authority than women.

Yes. Will 'presenting as a woman' increase my authority and credibility? In which case, how do I do that?

In the end, I asked if she thought it would be better for CVs and job applications to not include the sex of the applicant.
I meant to follow that with - what her general thoughts were re. the inclusion of pronouns in signatures.

My question was not read.