Imagine submitting a (original) view of a senior or senior female economist (original) to the public. Which one do you expect is more convincing? I think my first guess would be "non", which is consistent with the famous statement by former British politician Michael Gove in the Brexit movement that people "have enough experts". If I didn’t do this, my next guess was “men”, based on research that people often still have “authoritative gaps”. But when economists Hans Henrik Sievertsen and Sarah Smith conducted this experiment in real life, it turned out that I was wrong in both.
Sievertsen and Smith showed the United States about 3,000 members of the public, including a series of statements about economic issues, from financial regulation to unexpected taxes and AI. They let them know if a real life of an economist strongly agrees, agrees, is uncertain, disagrees or strongly disagrees with the claim. They then ask for the person's own opinion. Expert opinions were drawn from a group run by the University of Chicago that often draws perspectives on a variety of topics by leading academic economists at top universities in the United States.
The study found that public opinion on these issues was influenced by the perception of economists. What’s more interesting is that female economists are more influential than men. The extra effect of seeing the opinions expressed by female experts is 20% higher than seeing the same opinions expressed by male experts.
Why that? To find answers, the researchers reteached the experiment, but this time they deleted information about the expert certificate (their professorship title and university name). When the public only knows that they are "economists", the gender gap disappears: men and women are just as persuasive to the public.
For Sievertsen and Smith, the best explanation they found is that the public is suppose their hypothesis: becoming professors at famous universities in a male-dominated field, these women must be more impressed than men. "Simple and obvious successful women, if they "do it" in the stereotypical male field, will be considered better than their male counterparts," they wrote in their paper.
Some other studies have found similar phenomena. In one experiment, scholars conducted some game-based tests in Ethiopia to study whether the advice people follow when randomly assigned male or female leaders (which were originally the same) differs. The experiment found that people are unlikely to follow the guidance of female leaders. But when researchers tell a portion of people that have high leadership abilities, people are more likely to follow the guidance of "high-capacity" women than "high-capacity" men.
One can correctly assume that a woman who succeeds in a male-dominated field must be Better Better than male opponents? Or is it very unfair to men? "I won't say we know women have to be better" to be the best in economics," Smith told me. “But we certainly know that stereotypes about women further discriminate against the process.”
For example, in one study, machine learning techniques were used to study recordings of more than 1,700 economic workshops. The analysis found that female speakers interrupted more frequently and earlier than male speakers, and that additional interruptions came primarily from female rather than male audiences. The study also found that men were more likely to comment than ask questions from female presenters.
Another study found that men have roughly the same tenure for both co-written research papers or letters alone, and the more they have collaborative papers, the less likely women are to get tenure.
In some male-dominated occupations, it is useful to know that this is the assumption they may make.
For example, if you are a senior woman in a predominantly male field and you are going to do something public, it means you should keep your inner voice so silent that your audience may ignore or discount your expertise. In fact, they are likely to be thinking: "At her place, she has to impress. I'm going to listen to what she says."
sarah.oconnor@ft.com