Subtle Sexism in Conscious and Spiritual Spaces
Trigger warning: sexism does not always arrive looking like sexism.
Sometimes it is obvious: different pay, the boys’ club, the not-too-overt assumption that you probably do not understand the financial details, the contractual structure, or the strategic decisions. The subtle tone that suggests that because you are intuitive, emotional, or spiritually inclined, you must somehow be less competent in practical matters. Or the very old story of a man’s opinion carrying more weight before he has done anything to earn it.
None of that is pleasant. None of it is easy.
And yet, strangely, the blunt version is often easier to meet, because at least it is visible. You can point at it. You can name it. You know what room you are standing in.
The more difficult form is the subtle one. The kind that hides inside conscious communities, spiritual spaces, empowerment circles—the places where everyone believes they are already beyond gender bias.
And to be precise, this is not really about students/participants.
In clear teacher-participant spaces—retreats, teacher trainings, meditation immersions—authority tends to settle naturally. People come to receive. The container is clear. If you know what you are doing, people feel it.
Especially in embodied work, competence cannot be performed for long. Presence reveals itself. Depth reveals itself. Experience reveals itself.
I have rarely had to prove myself there.
Most people who enter my work do so with trust, and what grows from there is mutual respect. I respect their intelligence, their agency, their self-leadership. They respect my experience, my guidance, and my leadership. That part feels clean.
The more interesting tension appears among peers.
It shows up in those professional spaces where hierarchy is less obvious—between colleagues, fellow teachers, collaborators, people moving in the same field—where authority is not clearly assigned, but constantly negotiated.
Because students/participants ask a simple question: can I trust this teacher?
Peers are often asking something else entirely: do I have to place this person above me?
That is a very different question. One is about learning. The other is about status. And that is where things become subtle. Because once authority is socially negotiated, ego enters the room. Competitiveness enters. Seniority, visibility, unspoken hierarchy—all of it starts shaping how people respond to each other.
And gender enters too.
When a man holds authority, it often feels neutral. It is accepted without much friction.
When a woman holds authority strongly—without shrinking herself, over-explaining, softening every edge, or asking for permission—it can create a different response. Not always openly, but through hesitation, through subtle testing, through the need to challenge, question, or withhold trust just a little longer.
Sometimes this comes from men. Often, it comes from women too.
And this is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable, because patriarchy is not simply male behavior. It is cultural conditioning. It shapes perception. It teaches all of us what authority is supposed to look like, sound like, and feel like.
What Mary Ann Sieghart Calls “The Authority Gap”
Too often, authority still feels more legitimate when it arrives in masculine packaging. Mary Ann Sieghart calls this “the authority gap.”
In her 2021 book The Authority Gap: Why Women Are Still Taken Less Seriously Than Men, she writes about how women are interrupted more, challenged more, doubted more, and granted less default credibility than men. Men are often assumed competent until proven otherwise. Women are often expected to prove competence first.
A 2024 Women in the Workplace report by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey found that 39% of women report being frequently interrupted or spoken over, compared to 20% of men, while 38% report remarks that challenge their competence or undermine their leadership, compared to 26% of men.
And a 2025 review published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences made the mechanism even clearer: power is still culturally coded as masculine. Authority itself is unconsciously associated with masculinity, which means women in positions of authority often face resistance simply for occupying that role.
That sentence explains something many women feel but struggle to name. It is not always open discrimination.
It is the invisible tax.
The extra proving. The repeated establishing. The quiet calculation of how much authority you are allowed to hold before people become uncomfortable.
If you are a woman reading this, you have probably felt it.
You explain yourself more carefully. You establish credibility before speaking. You notice your words needing more proof before they are trusted.
And then a man says something similar—sometimes with less experience behind it—and somehow it lands faster. Cleaner. Heavier. As if authority arrived with him.
I taught a woman for years. She became a peer in the same field, and I watched her gradually orient herself toward a much older male teacher — deferring to his framing, trusting his perspective with a kind of ease she never quite extended to mine. We were talking about it at some point, and I looked at her and said, do I need to have a dick and a long white beard for this to feel legitimate?
She laughed. I laughed. And then there was that particular silence that follows a joke everyone recognises as true.
Feminine Power Is Not About Becoming Harder
This is the real work.
Not performative empowerment. Not branding sisterhood. Not quoting feminine leadership while still instinctively trusting the masculine voice more.
The real work is noticing where you still believe wisdom sounds more legitimate when it comes from a man. Where leadership feels safer when it looks masculine. Where power becomes acceptable only when a woman makes it softer, smaller, easier to digest.
Because empowerment that disappears the moment authority enters the room is not empowerment. It is branding. And The Feminine Way was never about branding. It is about creating a life where you can be loved, successful, and safe—without leaving yourself behind.
If this conversation stirs up something in you; here is my invitation.
The Feminine Way Signature Program is for women who no longer want success at the cost of themselves. It is for women ready to create a life where love, power, peace, beauty, sensuality, purpose, and meaningful achievement can coexist—without self-betrayal.
Because feminine power is not about becoming harder.
It is about becoming truer.
