The Language of Female Leadership

Could language be a reason why women are under-represented at senior level in the business world? Using data from senior management meetings, this book explores how female leaders use language to achieve their business and relational goals by arguing that senior women have to develop linguistic expertise in order to be effective leaders.

Could language be a reason why women are under-represented at senior level in the business world? The Language of Female Leadership investigates how female leaders actually use language to achieve their business and relational goals. The author proposes that the language of women leaders is shaped by the type of corporation they work for. Based on the latest research, three types of ''gendered corporation'' appear to affect the way women interact with colleagues: the male-dominated, the gender-divided and the gender-multiple. This book shows that senior women have to carry out extra ''linguistic work'' to make their mark in the boardroom. In male-dominated and gender-divided corporations, women must develop an extraordinary linguistic expertise just to survive. In gender-multiple corporations, this linguistic expertise helps them to be highly regarded and effective leaders.