New book asks ‘Why aren’t women taken as seriously as men?’

This post is also available in: العربية

Penguin Random House imprint Doubleday has bought a title that will surely appeal to PublisHer, the informal networking group that seeks to address the publishing industry’s ‘entrenched gender imbalances and drive an international agenda for change’.  The book in question is The Authority Gap by British journalist and broadcaster Mary Ann Sieghart, which will look at “why women are still taken less seriously than men, and what we can do about it”.

UK and Commonwealth rights were bought by Doubleday editor Helena Gonda from Will Francis at Janklow & Nesbit in London.  According to the publisher, the book will “take a long, hard look at the question of why women are still taken less seriously than men; why women are promoted to fewer top jobs, accorded less credit for their work, and accorded less authority than their male counterparts…[Sieghart] seeks to interrogate our unconscious biases in detail and map out the measures we can take, as individuals and society, both to counteract them, and to see them for what they are – an irrational but tenacious product of our social conditioning”.

Gonda praised Sieghart as “a brilliantly sharp writer, with the empathy and determination to highlight the wide gap between men and women at both a structural and individual level. Here she brings together rigorous studies and original research to show how much more reluctant we are to be influenced by women’s views than by men’s, even from an early age, and how uncomfortable we still are sometimes with women in positions of authority.  We’re very excited at Transworld to be working with her on such an important book.”.

Sieghart said: “I’m thrilled to be working with Transworld and Helena Gonda on The Authority Gap. Doubleday is a fantastic imprint, with a rich list of brilliant and thought-provoking authors, and Helena is an acute and intelligent editor, as well as a kindred spirit on the fundamental argument of the book.”

Arabic rights in the title have not yet been sold and Janklow & Nesbit is waiting until it has more material before it sends out on submission.  Doubleday is scheduled to publish in spring 2022.