The Authority Gap & Clothing: Expressions of Femininity and Personal Style in the Workplace
The authority gap is the term coined for how men are taken more seriously in the workplace than women. First coined by Mary Ann Sieghart in her 2021 book The Authority Gap, this phrase can be applied to a variety of ways in which women have to work much harder to be respected.
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Women tend to be interrupted, underestimated, and talked over far more than men. Rather than assuming that women know what they are talking about, they have to prove that that is the case. Men have more space to express their ideas, and their accomplishments are considered more impressive, even when they are equal to the accomplishments of a woman.
There are countless ways in which women’s behavior and style is frowned upon. Valley Girl accents, vocal fry, and uptalk (when a person’s voice rises at the end of a sentence, like it might when asking a question) are often considered to make a person sound less intelligent. Of course, there is absolutely no reason for this, except for the fact that women, and especially more feminine women, tend to use these linguistic patterns.
Photo: Lily Cummings via Vogue
Women in the workplace often dress extremely carefully in order to be taken as seriously as possible. They try to make themselves look older if they are young, and younger if they are older. They always wear nice shoes, dresses, skirts, blazers. They opt for glasses instead of contacts, purposefully desexualize their bodies, and even dye their hair from blonde to brown since brunette women tend to be perceived as smarter.
In these same workplaces, their male coworkers can wear jeans and t-shirts without even thinking about it. Women do immense amounts of labor before even stepping into the office to ensure that they are taken seriously, and even then, it doesn’t always work.
As much as women are affected by this unfair standard, women of color struggle even more than their white counterparts. Not only do they have to compete with the same assumptions and perceptions about their gender, but also about their race. In addition to clothing and age, Black women are often judged for their hair, with traditional hairstyles or natural hair often considered ‘unprofessional’.
Photo: Tracee Ellis Ross via Vogue
The solutions to these problems are education, championing women, and being aware of one’s own biases. These issues are complex and deeply ingrained in all of us, and unfortunately cannot be solved overnight. However, actions like being cognizant of dress codes for hair and clothing in the workplace can create real progress on a small but tangible scale. Encouraging women to wear what they want instead of what they feel they must in order to be seen, or to wear their hair however makes them feel comfortable makes the workplace more welcoming for women and accepting of their position in the workplace.