There was some news story about a guy who was accidentally sending emails with the signature of his female co-worker. As soon as it happened he saw people questioning his advice, disregarding things he said they should do, and being rude about it when he would insist. When he fixed the signature issue the guy completely changed his tone.
It's a **** experiment with no real evidence and I probably wouldn't believe it based on that scenario, but I've seen it first hand.
My sister used to work the the same computer repair shop I did, and I saw people arguing with her over asinine stuff that the guys never had to argue about. The clearest evidence of it in my opinion is how usually when someone called or came in, probably 30% of the time they would start by saying "hi, can I speak to a technician?" It was men and women who did this. I think once in 5 years was I asked that question and it was over the phone, not in person. Yet several times a week she was asked that and had to explain that she was a tech and could indeed help them.
Every now and then if she ran into a real stubborn dude who refused to believe anything she said and would tell her she didn't know what she was talking about, she would hand off to a much more inexperienced male co-worker (who I basically considered useless since he hardly knew anything and had no interest in learning about tech). Then the new tech would say some real dumb stuff, sometimes outright lies (since he didn't want to look stupid) and the customer would eat it up and be very thankful for the "help".
I could see the frustration develop over the years in my sister, and I'd feel really bad for her. Eventually she quit, telling me in private that this was one of the reasons. Now she works with animals...
