December 2021

Listed in The Times’ Best Books of 2021

In the Philosophy and Ideas section

“Mary Ann Sieghart, a former Times columnist, explores how society’s “implicit” bias against women affects even those at the very top. The book is founded on interviews with powerful women, from Hillary Clinton to the judge Brenda “Spiderwoman” Hale. It’s also chockful of dispiriting statistics. For instance, one study found that men thought women were dominating the conversation, even when they spoke for only 30 per cent of the time. Only 19 per cent of experts quoted in the British media are women.”

About the author

Journalist, author, public speaker, consultant, non-executive director, broadcaster

Mary Ann Sieghart is author of the best-selling book, The Authority Gap: Why Women Are Still Taken Less Seriously Than Men, and What We Can Do About it and Founding Partner of The Authority Gap Consultancy. She spent 20 years as Assistant Editor and columnist at The Times and won a large following for her columns on politics, economics, feminism, parenthood and life in general. She has presented many programmes on BBC Radio 4, such as Start the Week, Profile, Analysis, Fallout and One to One. She chaired the revival of The Brains Trust on BBC2 and recently spent a year as a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. She has chaired the Social Market Foundation think tank, is a Visiting Professor at the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London, and sits on numerous boards. She was Chair of the judges for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022.

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Mary Ann Sieghart