Treating women with respect is the first step in proving we are all equals

When Ben Barres was a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then living as a woman, his maths professor set the class a difficult test with five questions. The last one was particularly hard, but Barres still managed to solve it. The following day, the professor handed back the papers and announced that no-one had answered the fifth question.

Barres picks up the story: “I went to the professor and I said, ‘I solved it.’ He had a look of disdain in his eyes, and he said, ‘You must have had your boyfriend solve it.’ I didn’t know what to say. He was in essence accusing me of cheating. I was incensed by that.”

Then, as a middleaged Stanford professor of neuroscience, Barres transitioned to living as a man. He was astonished by the difference it made. “I’ve had the thought a million times,” he wrote, “I am taken more seriously.” At one seminar, a faculty member who didn’t know his history said, “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister’s!” Barres concluded: “By far the main difference that I have noticed is that people who don’t know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect.”

What Barres did by changing gender was to leap across the authority gap: the difference between how seriously we take women and how seriously we take men. And although his story sounds anecdotal, it’s actually a very scientific experiment because everything about him remained the same – his intelligence, ability, personality, body of work. The only thing that changed was his gender.

Women have always complained of being interrupted, talked over, underestimated, ignored, mansplained to, or assumed to be less expert than we are. It’s infuriating, and it holds us back. But it’s hard for us to prove objectively that this authority gap exists. Because on each occasion that we suffer this treatment, there could always be another explanation. Perhaps the man who made exactly the same point as we did earlier and was applauded for it (while ours was ignored) was simply more eloquent?

What Barres’ experience, and the experience of many trans men, shows us is this is a real phenomenon. If the same person gets dramatically different treatment when he is seen as male, that’s the perfect measure of how much harder it still is to be taken seriously as a woman.

We think we’ve made great strides towards equality, and in some respects we have.

But in our everyday interactions, we still tend to respect men more, listen to them more attentively and allow them to influence us more easily.

So we can only narrow the authority gap by changing our own behaviour. We need to stop ourselves interrupting a woman or talking over her. We mustn’t start with the assumption she’s not particularly intelligent or capable only to be surprised when she proves she is. We shouldn’t be reluctant to change our minds if she turns out to know more than we do.

It’s not that hard to do. What’s more, the women you start treating with respect will hugely appreciate it and like you more. So let’s all make that effort, starting today.