That's What She Said: What Men Need to Know (and Women Need to Tell Them) about Working Together

by Joanne Lipman

Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

The world has changed in the wake of the #MeToo movement. What comes next? Going beyond the message of Lean In and The Confidence Code, Joanne Lippman, Gannett’s Chief Content Officer, offers solutions to help professionals solve gender gap issues and achieve parity at work in this inclusive and realistic handbook. Newly updated by the author to include a cheat sheet for taking positive action now, this timely, essential book also offers tools for having tough—but necessary—discussions.

Companies with more women in senior leadership perform better by virtually every financial measure, and women employees help boost creativity and can temper risky behavior—such as the financial gambles behind the 2008 economic collapse. Yet in the United States, ninety-five percent of Fortune 500 chief executives are men, and women hold only seventeen percent of seats on corporate boards. More men are reaching across the gender divide, genuinely trying to reinvent the culture and transform the way we work together. Despite these good intentions, fumbles, missteps, frustration, and misunderstanding continue to inflict real and lasting damage on women’s careers.

What can the Enron scandal teach us about the way men and women communicate professionally? How does brain circuitry help explain men’s fear of women’s emotions at work? Why did Kimberly Clark blindly have an all-male team of executives in charge of their Kotex tampon line? In That’s What She Said, veteran media executive Joanne Lipman raises these intriguing questions and more to find workable solutions that individual managers, organizations, and policy makers can employ to make work more equitable and rewarding for all professionals.

Filled with illuminating anecdotes, data from the most recent relevant studies, and stories from Lipman’s own journey to the top of a male-dominated industry, That’s What She Said is a book about success that persuasively shows why empowering women as true equals is an essential goal for us all—and offers a roadmap for getting there.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062437228
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/26/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	214,348
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Joanne Lipman is the Editor in Chief of the USA TODAY Network. She began her career at the Wall Street Journal, where she was the first woman to become Deputy Managing Editor and supervised coverage that won three Pulitzer Prizes. She was also the founding editor-in-chief of Condé Nast Portfolio magazine and portfolio.com. She lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Men Aren't the Enemy ix

1 The Secret Lives of Women (a Primer for Men) 1

2 She'll Make You Mora Successful 20

3 We're All a Little Bit Sexist 46

4 The Twelve Most Terrifying Words in the English Language 68

5 She's Pretty Sure You Don't Respect Her 89

6 She Deserves a Raise. But She Won't Ask for It 119

7 Blind Auditions; Solving for Bias, Emotion, and Other Stuff You Can't Control 145

8 Invisible Women; The World's Greatest Untapped Resource 173

9 The Next Generation: The Harvard Experiment 195

10 The Best Place in the World to Be a Woman? 215

Conclusion: The Future Is Now 233

Afterword 242

Acknowledgments 248

Notes 250

Editorial Reviews

Insightful and timely. The points Joanne Lipman makes in That’s What She Said are right on target for today’s new workplace. It will resonate whether you’re male or female, young or old, manager or managed, a long-term employee or just starting your career.

Andrew H. Tisch

That’s What She Said  is an instant classic. It’s a must-read for two groups of people: men and women.

Roger McNamee

Attention, good guys: if you want to advocate for women but don’t want to be villainized, this book is for you. It’s a rare guide on championing gender equality that you’ll actually enjoy reading—and it’s full of strategies for improving your workplace.

Adam Grant

At last! That’s What She Said is so timely—and so needed. It’s the ultimate guide for women (and men) who are determined to close the gender gap. Lively and readable, it’s a game-changer in how we understand gender relations—and how we can break down barriers, right now.

Sallie Krawcheck

Joanne Lipman has written an urgently needed exploration of how men—alongside women—can close the gender gap at work and in life. Now, more than ever, we need this book and its real, pragmatic solutions. By rooting her insights in real-world examples, extensive academic research, and stories that are a joy to read, she has provided an essential primer on how we can all succeed together.

Charles Duhigg

Joanne Lipman leaves her soapbox at home, rolls up her sleeves, and provides real solutions to complex problems. Her valuable insights are a tool kit for men and women to not only work alongside each other but to bring out each other’s best.

Glen Mazzara

It’s great we are talking the talk but Joanne Lipman’s cutting edge research and razor sharp advice will help men and women alike start walking the walk (toward a more equitable workplace).

Katie Couric

…a persuasive examination of the innumerable institutionalized prejudices, roadblocks and often unconscious undermining that women face in nearly every aspect of public and private life. Some of [Lipman's] facts will be familiar to H.R. directors, women's studies scholars and reporters who cover gender equality. They will likely be revelatory to nearly everyone else…[Lipman] is a skilled assembler of data and a graceful storyteller.

The New York Times Book Review - Robbie Myers

★ 11/06/2017
Lipman (Strings Attached), editor-in-chief of USA Today, makes a bold statement with this important book examining biases favoring men in business. In this road map to empowerment, Lipman explains that it’s not just men who devalue their female colleagues’ work, but also the women themselves, as perhaps most tellingly illustrated by a survey of social-psychology studies observing this phenomenon beginning in childhood. To be sure, readers will learn here of companies actively addressing gender imbalances. Lipman commends Blake Irving of GoDaddy, a company once notorious for sexist advertising, for becoming an outspoken proponent of equal pay. Elsewhere she observes that after the U.S.’s leading symphony orchestras began blind auditions, wherein auditioning musicians perform behind a screen, female representation skyrocketed, from 5% in 1970 to nearly 50% today— a tactic she finds applicable to the business world. According to one dramatic figure Lipman cites, encouraging women who gave up work for motherhood to rejoin the labor pool could add as much as $2.1 trillion to the U.S. economy. This book goes a step further than Sheryl Sandberg’s bestselling Lean In and challenges both men and women to examine their own prejudices and actively reshape work cultures to be more welcoming to women. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

12/01/2017
With gender pay gaps and sexual harassment increasingly in the news, books on improving the lot of women in the workplace are more relevant than ever. Lipman, chief content officer of Gannett and editor in chief of USA Today, has written this latest paean to achieving full equality. Full of solid points and extensively researched and footnoted, this book makes a point of not blaming men exclusively for the current climate. After all, as the author points out, the problems will take both men and women to solve, so alienating men is not the answer either. Implicit (as well as explicit) bias is raised, as well as issues exacerbated by women themselves, including a hesitancy to blow their own horns and seek out promotions and raises. Blind auditions are cited as one fix, but their use is limited to just a few fields. Unfortunately, much of the book feels like the author is "preaching to the choir." While well written, with timely examples and illustrations, there appears to be little that can be done to combat the problems raised without major cultural and leadership shifts. That said, getting the word out yet again, cannot hurt. VERDICT A good book on a sadly current topic. [See Prepub Alert, 8/21/17.]—Susan Hurst, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH

Library Journal

2017-11-14
A sweeping, salient survey of the gender gap in corporate America.There are scores of bestselling books about being female in the workplace, most of which are written by women for women. Lipman (co-author: Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Art of Perfection, 2013, etc.) attempts to bump the dialogue to another level by including men in the conversation. Currently the chief content officer of Gannett and editor-in-chief of USA Today, the author has long been a fixture in the upper echelons of American journalism. In this volume, she combines decades of her own observations and experiences with a profusion of data-driven research about the state of the gender union—or disunion—in the workplace. The sheer number of stories and statistics can be overwhelming at times, but they do conclusively demonstrate that inequality and sexism are alive and well in the workplace. Establishing these facts seems less about proving a point and more about getting details out of the way before moving to the main inquiry of the book—namely, how to bring about real change? Lipman chronicles numerous initiatives—many spearheaded by men—indicating that, "despite intractable issues of misogyny and abuse in some corners, we are closing in on solutions." Such programs as formal mentoring programs, blind job applications, and various educational initiatives are making a difference, though on a grand scale, the gains appear to be slight and slow. Despite the many obstacles, the book is packed with pithy insights on how real change might occur. The author notes that it will take more than just men and women reaching across the gender divide and working together; it will also require each sex to examine how they are perpetuating a workplace ideal that favors men. Impressively, Lipman manages to call out the problem and stare it squarely in the face without demonizing or alienating those who are vital to its solution.A solid start to an essential, gender-inclusive conversation.

Kirkus Reviews

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