“Let me finish my point!” cried Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor when an advocate, Bert W. Rein, interrupted her for the umpteenth time against the court’s rules. “I am speaking!” protested Kamala D. Harris when Mike Pence talked over her during a vice-presidential debate. However authoritative a woman is, she is still disproportionately likely to be interrupted by a man, even one more junior than she. So how will Ketanji Brown Jackson fare if her nomination is confirmed? How much voice will she have?

All of us—to a greater or lesser extent, and often without realizing ​it—tend to expect less of women, listen to them less attentively and feel uncomfortable with them in positions of authority. But there are men who do not expose themselves to women’s voices in the first place, across the cultural spectrum, whether the women are on social media, writing books or appearing in films. If these men are not listening to, reading or watching women, how can they accord them any authority at all? How do they even know if the women are any good?