Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

by Amanda Montell

As we’ve already learned, adding women to workplace environments doesn’t automatically earn them more respect; sometimes, it can even have the opposite effect by intimidating their male colleagues, impelling them to behave even more dominantly. However, when women make up the active majority of higher-up positions (or all of them), that story changes. Take it from University of Texas professor Ethan Burris, who studied a credit union staff made up of 74 percent women supervisors. “Sure enough,” Sandberg reports, “when women spoke up there, they were more likely to be heard than men.” Studies also show that by and large, companies led by women over-perform. “Start-ups led by women are more likely to succeed,” Sandberg says, “innovative firms with more women in top management are more profitable; and companies with more gender diversity have more revenue, customers, market share, and profits.”