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The Authority Gap: Why Women Are Still Taken Less Seriously Than Men, and What We Can Do About It

Mary Ann Sieghart

2021 · 384 pages · Narrative nonfiction

cosy moodslow burnheavy and literary toneresolved and happy ending

How it reads

The Authority Gap: Why Women Are Still Taken Less Seriously Than Men, and What We Can Do About It is narrative nonfiction (gender and social psychology nonfiction, specifically), and its dominant mood is cosy. Low stakes, warm company: the kind of book you read under a blanket. It's a slow burn: character-driven, with a payoff that comes from accumulation rather than twists. It rewards attention and suits unhurried reading more than five-minute gaps.

It's set in an international setting, in the present day, told in the third person across several viewpoints. Its central concerns are power and politics, identity and class and society. In weight it's heavy and literary — denser, more serious, and more demanding of you.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending resolves happily. At 384 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.

Pick it up if…

  • you're in the mood for something cosy
  • you have time to settle in
  • you want something to chew on

Maybe not if…

  • you need something dark, tense or eerie
  • you're reading in five-minute gaps

All 15 dimensions

Author gender
female
Author experience
established
Setting: place
international
Setting: time
contemporary
Mood / feeling
cosy
Tone / weight
heavy and literary
Length
medium
Narrative style
third person, several viewpoints
Publication era
recent
Popularity
well known
Series vs standalone
standalone
Themes
power and politics, identity, class and society
Ending style
resolved and happy

What these mean: the 15 dimensions of a book.

Books with a similar reading

The closest books in Match Book's catalogue across the same dimensions, and what they share.

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