Gordon Brown and George Osborne studied history, but neither faced the questions of suitability levelled at the first woman in the job

Rachel Reeves is not for turning. She won’t be pushed around, knocked off course, undermined by backbench mutterings or criticism from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). The message the chancellor seemingly wants to send this week is that it’s her way or the highway, and if this attempt to stamp her authority on a jittery political moment feels a bit defensive or even impervious to criticism – well, perhaps it’s worth acknowledging that that authority is now being challenged in ways that strangely didn’t happen to her male predecessors.

Is it just a coincidence that the first female chancellor is also the first to be swarmed by a mob of online truthers, flatly refusing to believe the woman they call “Rachel from accounts” was really employed at the Bank of England doing anything senior? (For the record: yes, she really did work there as an economist; no, going on to work for the less prestigious Halifax Bank of Scotland while scouting for a parliamentary seat doesn’t make her a call centre operative; and yes, you absolutely can rip someone’s budget to shreds without getting unnecessarily hysterical about them changing their LinkedIn entry to clarify a job title after being picked up on it by the Guido Fawkes website.) Or is this apparent desperation to believe that a woman in a position of authority must be a jumped-up know-nothing telling us something deeper?

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist