Current affairs
THE AUTHORITY GAP
WHY WOMEN ARE STILL TAKEN LESS SERIOUSLY THAN MEN, AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT
MARY ANN SIEGHART
Doubleday, 384pp, £16.99
Sieghart opens her book with the story of Mary McAleese, president of Ireland, on an official delegation to the Vatican in 1999. The Pope (John Paul II) walked past her outstretched hand and instead held out a hand to her husband, standing beside her, and asked: ‘Would you not prefer to be President of Ireland rather than married to the President of Ireland?’ It is the first of many such anecdotes in a book which argues that the wrong attribution of expertise and power is wasteful of available resources and harms men as well as women. It seems not to have occurred either to Sieghart or to her reviewers that the Pope was perhaps just being courteous to the less important person in the room.
Vicky Price in the twinned the story of the Vatican reception with the recent snub offered to Ursula von
