“I mean, these are extraordinarily bright women,” BYU political-science professor Jessica R. Preece (BA ’03) says of the women in their latest study. “And yet, we see these patterns . . . ,” she says, trailing off.

She and her BYU colleagues set out to examine the female experience in a top-10, predominately male collegiate accounting program—a program where the women, overall, matriculated with higher GPAs and more leadership experience than their male peers. The students move through the program on teams, and administrators wanted to know how best to build them. Traditionally, they spread the women out—for diversity, right?

The researchers were well suited: political-science professor Christopher F. Karpowitz (BA ’94, MA ’96) is a nationally recognized expert on group gender dynamics, and Preece and economics professor Olga Stoddard basically run a gender think tank at BYU, the Gender and Civic Engagement Lab.

Here’s the short of it: even though both men and women reported loving their groups, because of the study’s findings, the program will not put a woman alone on a team of men again.

What happens when women are outnumbered? After years spent analyzing lab and real-life settings to determine what it takes for a woman to really be heard—to truly be perceived as competent and influential—these professors have found the same truth: for women, having a seat at the table does not mean having a voice.

“Women are systematically seen as less authoritative,” says Preece. “And their influence is systematically lower. And they’re speaking less. And when they’re speaking up, they’re not being listened to as much, and they are being interrupted more.”

This applies well beyond study groups.

“Group-level decision making is ubiquitous,” says Karpowitz. It ranges from the highest level, where men and women work together in Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, on down to juries, town halls, PTAs, and work teams. It applies even on Church ward councils and in families, he stresses. In one realm or another, no one falls outside the scope of this research.

However inadvertent, the gender dynamics shutting women down are real, says Preece. The environment, she emphasizes, doesn’t have to be hostile. “Multiple things can be true at once. You can simultaneously like the people you’re working with and still let biases creep in.”

Rather than outright misogyny, she says it’s usually cultural norms and gendered messages that subtly—and profoundly—shape the rules of engagement. Individuals who suppress female speech may do so unwittingly. “They may love women,” says Preece. “They may even be a woman!” But as a society we have been “slowly socialized over years to discount” female expertise and perspectives.

The problem, in part, could be you. Says Preece: “We have lots of learning and unlearning to do.”