IF YOU’RE a woman, read it. If you’re a man, read it. Sometimes a book tells you something you really needed to know, whether you realised it or not, and How Women Decide is one of those books. If you are female, it may well leave you as it did me with the sense that a gauzy veil has been lifted from your eyes; that a phenomenon sensed and half-recognised has been brought into sharp focus. Regardless of your gender, it will probably help you make better decisions.

This is not because neuroscientist Therese Huston posits some radical new theory; rather, she throws a bright laboratory light on familiar territory – women’s experiences at work – and then pins down with scientific precision the subtle and not-so-subtle stereotyping women encounter, explaining how these societal expectations impact on women’s decision-making.

If you are a woman, have you ever sat in a meeting chiding yourself internally for the ridiculous anxiety you feel about speaking up when you know that your perspective would be valuable? Then this book will help you understand why that happens. Or are you a man who wonders why you don’t have more talented women in senior positions in your organisation? Then this book could give you a fascinating insight into what’s holding women back.

Because we are still only just breaking the mould of millennia of male domination of public life, the professional world is a less comfortable place for women than it is for men. It is therefore as unsurprising as it is unfair that a woman making a decision is scrutinised more closely than a man, that she has to continually prove her ability to make the right call.

After all, women are still dogged by deep-seated prejudices, coming from both men and from other women. Take the assumption that women possess intuition and are apt at using this supposed emotional insight to make capricious decisions where men use cold hard reasoning.

Guess what? That’s rubbish. Out of 32 research studies on this issue, not a single one showed women were more likely than men to go with their gut instinct, but several showed they were more likely to be more analytical than men. Since decisions made on gut instinct are just as likely to be wrong as right (scientists have helpfully researched that too), this officially counts as a good thing for the dames.

Women are better at interpersonal sensitivity – picking up cues indicating other team members’ emotions and concerns – and this is thought to be why yet another body of experiments shows that having more women in the room makes for decisions that are, objectively speaking, better.

Huston notes that society tends to judge men as being more decisive – better at making swifter, bolder decisions – than women. Women are typically assumed to be more collaborative and prone to shy away from tough calls.

Well, women do tend to be more collaborative, not least because, given the scrutiny they face, it’s good practice to build coalitions of support for their judgments in advance. But it is perfectly possible to make a timely decision taking others’ views into account; indeed, that approach is likely to be better than forging ahead without discussion.

So far so validating. But for me, where this book gets really interesting is in its consideration of a phenomenon called stereotype threat. This is the anxiety, for women, that they will live up to someone else’s negative expectations of them. It’s that tense feeling that makes you fluff your parallel parking when there’s a bloke standing on the pavement with a wry smile on his face. At work, it’s the anxiety that makes it hard to decide anything around certain people or that makes you go quiet in a meeting.

The research evidence on how dramatic and pernicious an effect the stereotype threat creates, carefully documented from a number of studies in the book, is astounding. People underperform when they sense that others expect them to do so. This can make women in male dominated meetings stay mute out of worry that if they say what’s on their mind, they’ll be considered “stupid”. Their energies are taken up wrestling internally with self-doubt instead of focusing on the task in hand. No wonder a man in the same meeting, unencumbered by such concerns, finds it easier to focus on the decision in hand.

The professional world is a safer place for a man, especially a white man, which is one reason why men appear to be more willing to take risks: they are less harshly judged than a woman would be if their decision goes wrong.

There is more. The notion that women tend to get emotional and fall apart when they’re stressed, is categorically incorrect. In fact, the evidence shows women are often calmer and more focused than men in stressful situations. They are alert to risk, whereas under stress men are more apt to take bigger risks, which is thought to be down to our evolutionary heritage.

What does all this mean? That men and women complement each other in the decision-making department? Certainly.

But the bigger take-home message from this book is that women are just as capable of making good decisions as men and are often the best decision-makers of all.

How Woman Decide by Therese Huston is published by OneWorld, priced £12.99