CHOOSE YOUR WORDS
Rather than empowering, is the ‘girl boss’ lexicon holding women back?
Loud and proud boss babe? Vocal about your #ladieswholift gains? Cutesy terms to denote women’s strength, power and status have crept into our conversations. As research suggests the way you talk about yourself could be sabotaging your progress, we ask if it’s time for this rhetoric to get a rebrand
When Alice Ojeda quit her well-paid marketing job to start her own eco-friendly subscription-box service, she couldn’t wait to be her own boss. She had money saved in a dedicated business account, a network of contacts to call upon and a watertight business plan. By way of celebrating her bold new move, a friend bought her a notebook as a gift – because nothing says ‘new start’ like stationery. ‘It was black, with “Girl Boss” emblazoned in glittery silver lettering,’ she recalls. ‘I thought it was playful, empowering even, and just the thing for filling with ideas.’ The 26-year-old soon got into the habit of taking it into meetings with other sustainable-business founders she hoped to collaborate with. But as the weeks wore on, and the notes she’d written evolved into plans, she began to sense a certain… vibe. Directed not towards her burgeoning enterprise, but at the notebook she was using to document it. ‘I’d catch people looking at it with bemused expressions and I began surreptitiously hiding it in meetings. Then I started outright apologising, explaining that it wasn’t me who’d bought it.’ It was only a matter of time before the gift was consigned to the recycling bin. ‘Girl boss’ isn’t the only well-meaning phrase that leaves a millennial-pink trail in its wake. Start to listen out for these diminutions and you can’t unhear them. They’re at the brunch table, congratulating your mate on her promotion – ‘What a boss babe!’ They’re on your carefully curated social feeds – deadlift PBS committed to Instagram tagged #ladieswholift; or cutesy photos of a woman working at a suspiciously tidy desk with a toddler next to her tagged #mumpreneur. They’re jumping out at you from the shelves of Waterstones – Think Like A SHEEO or (we shit you not) Boss Bitch: A Simple 12-Step Plan To Take Charge of Your Career. When it comes to the way we (we’re not absolving ourselves here) frame women, their strength and power, is it time we started reading between the lines? Giving an emphatic ‘yes’ to this proposal is Dr Ellen Kossek, professor of management at Purdue University in the US. ‘Never use the term “girl” in the workplace – girls are children; women are adults,’ she explains. ‘By using the word “girl”, you risk diminishing the gravitas of women in high-level roles.’ Say it out loud and what other words spring to mind? Girl… friend? Sure. Guide? Possibly. Chief executive? Not so much. But swapping out ‘girl’ for the more age-appropriate ‘woman’ doesn’t fix the issue, as it still functions as a qualifier, propping up the assumption that a regular boss is male. ‘Mentioning a woman’s gender every time you mention her status reinforces women’s “otherness”,’ says Dr Kossek. ‘It’s accentuating the difference, rather than promoting inclusion.’
PASS IT ON
How did we get here? ‘Language is constantly evolving,’ says Dr Lucy Jones, assistant professor in sociolinguistics at the University of Nottingham. ‘Technological advances have given rise to more methods of communication and, as a result, more ways of speaking and communicating. Language evolves through necessity, and spreads through contact.’ You hear something, you repeat it, someone uses it in a hashtag and, before you know it, it’s on the front cover of a book. It explains why some 12 million posts sit under #girlboss, the hashtag page illustrated by a picture of a woman at a desk exhibiting the kind of thigh exposure that may well elicit a quiet word if replicated in an actual office. This particular phrase was popularised – then trademarked – by Sophia Amoruso, former CEO of Us-based clothes e-tail business Nasty Gal in 2015, amid a wave of corporations and brands using language aimed to empower women. While some may read such tags as positive, inviting women into places previously occupied by men, a note of scepticism is sounded by Daniel Harbour, professor of the cognitive science of language at Queen Mary University, London. ‘Language isn’t a hands-off neutral message delivery system; it assigns values, sets agendas and communicates coded meanings,’ he explains. He cites the work of US cognitive linguist and philosopher George Lakoff, who believes effective political communication hinges on using language to plant ideas in people’s minds. ‘Think about Trump’s election campaign and his official slogan, “Make America Great Again,”’ says Harbour. ‘The use of “again” implies that America was great, it ceased to be great and needs to be put back there – and Trump is the person who will make things right.’ As for extrapolating Lakoff’s theory from the Oval Office to your average meeting room, Professor Harbour believes it applies equally well. Why? Phrases such as ‘girl boss’ carry certain connotations. ‘Your response to that phrase may not be a conscious thought, but you may have formed subconscious associations around the word “girl”, ie, that they don’t belong in the boardroom.’
‘Never use the term “girl” in the workplace – girls are children; women are adults’
This problem of association even crops up in the gym, according to London-based personal trainer Ban Hass (@banhass). ‘Terms such as “ladies who lift”, or referring to the weights section as “the boys’ room” only isolates women further,’ she explains. ‘They make us sound like we don’t believe we really belong there – or like we’re a novelty. You’d never hear ‘boys who run’ – they’re allowed to train however they want.’ What’s more, these terms could reinforce the fallacy that men train with strength and purpose, while women work out as a cutesy hobby. Though Ban acknowledges that these terms were created with the aim of making women feel more comfortable, she has a zerotolerance approach to gendered language of any kind in the context of how women exercise their bodies. ‘By referring to a modified press-up (pressups on your knees) as “girl press-ups”, you’re labelling women as the weaker sex,’ she argues. ‘It’s irresponsible, especially as there’s no shame in modifying an exercise.’
MIXED MESSAGES
Back to the notebook. By our experts’ logic, its message was that Alice was a girl playing at running a business; that, by presenting herself as such, she was infantilising her efforts and undermining her place at the table. No wonder it prompted some unsubtle side-eye. But before you dismiss this as the reaction of hand-wringing language police, the implications go way beyond a hasty trip to Ryman for some age-appropriate, gender-neutral stationery. In a large-scale 2018 study carried out by the World Bank, analysts studied 4,000 languages in an effort to explore the relationship between gendered language and participation in the workforce. They concluded that gendered languages – those with masculine and feminine nouns – appeared to reduce female participation in the workforce and perpetuated support for traditional gender roles. When questioned by WH, the lead authors explained that terms such as ‘girl boss’ and ‘sheeo’ could have similar effects, because of the way they highlight that most bosses aren’t women. Oh, and then there’s the pay gap. ‘While language doesn’t cause it, using terminology that exacerbates certain biases can certainly contribute to it. For example, that men are compatible with leadership and women aren’t,’ explains Michelle Ryan, professor of social and organisational psychology at the University of Exeter. ‘Our research has
shown that pay scales are subjective and become more so the higher up you go. This leaves more room for such unconscious biases to feed into these decisions.’ That they’re actually holding us back is a weighty accusation to level at words intended to empower. So should you consign ‘boss babe’, ‘mumpreneur’ and their ilk to linguistic landfill, or can there ever be a place for gendered terminology? Natasha Stromberg, founder of the feminist business directory Genderbuzz, thinks there is. She believes that to write off all gendered language as being potentially problematic is to miss the point. ‘Let’s not forget why these terms came about in the first place,’ she says. ‘Implications
‘I didn’t feel like an entrepreneur – it was easier to think of myself as a “girl boss” than a “boss”’
aside, the most important thing is that women have access to all the areas that men had traditionally dominated. And if using terms like “girl boss” or “sheeo” helps women claim these spaces for themselves, then, for me, that has to be a good thing. Leadership and wealth result in power, power results in change, so we should make advances in whatever way we can.’ Tally Rye recognises the merit of this approach. The 27-year-old PT initiated the #girlgains hashtag in a bid to help women feel more comfortable in the weights room – or, as she calls it, the ‘testosterzone’. ‘Having role models in certain fields is huge for women because it shows they can do things that involve entering new territory,’ she explains. Her take? Sure, reflect on the words we use about women, but don’t get so caught up in terminology that you lose sight of on-the-ground progress.
SPEAK WISELY
In the absence of a gendered-language swear jar, rewriting the rhetoric begins with understanding why you use the language you do. For Alice, the notebook initially represented a source of comfort during a period when she was experiencing what, with the benefit of hindsight, she now identifies as imposter syndrome. ‘Even though I was running my own business, I didn’t think of myself as an entrepreneur, a CEO or a founder,’ she explains. ‘I think it was easier to think of myself as a “girl boss” than a “boss”.’ I almost needed to dial down the scary word in my mind to make it feel more achievable.’ It was only a notebook, but throwing it away helped her to identify those feelings and begin to address them. ‘Since recognising myself as the founder of a business – and taking gender out of the equation – I’ve stopped thinking of myself as a small fish in a big pond. I’m no longer trying to people-please; I feel bold enough to bargain when I feel like I’m getting a bad deal and I’m establishing fair partnerships with the people I work with.’ And if you won’t do it for you, will you at least do it for the next generation? WH Editor-inchief Claire Sanderson, 40, recalls the moment she realised that her own use of language – and the ideologies within it – could be negatively infiltrating the mind of her three-year-old daughter Nell. ‘I was in the middle of praising her and realised that all the qualities I was listing were based on appearance: that she was so beautiful, so pretty, such a gorgeous girl. It was my default setting,’ she says. ‘Not only was I shocked and upset that I was linking her worth with her looks without thinking – risking that she’d learn to do the same
– but I knew that when it came to praising her six-yearold brother Zak, I was much more likely to tell him he was smart, clever, funny and strong.’ That moment ultimately made Claire more conscious of the language she was using around her daughter. ‘Now, I’m so careful,’ she adds. ‘I’m aware that my speech is a reflection of biases I’ve learnt as part of my generation, and I’m mindful not to pass these on to my daughter.’ Mindfulness. It’s a concept that’s been applied to everything from eating to sex. ‘It’s your prerogative to use the language that helps you to define yourself,’ says Dr Jones. ‘Just because someone doesn’t like the way you speak, doesn’t mean it’s wrong,’ she explains. ‘But having an awareness around the language you use is helpful when you want to be taken seriously. You can communicate more clearly if you understand how powerful your words can be.’ Well said.