That's What She Said

What Men Need To Know (and Women Need to Tell Them) About Working Together

By: Joanne Lipman

Narrated by: Caroline Slaughter

Going beyond the message of Lean In and The Confidence Code, Gannett’s Chief Content Officer contends that to achieve parity in the office, women don’t have to change—men do—and in this inclusive and realistic audio handbook, offers solutions to help professionals solve gender gap issues and achieve parity at work.

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 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.

Eye opening and a worthwhile book

I liked the book and found the material eye opening and unbelievable at times. I think it could have been shorter, but I don’t blame the author, I blame the publisher. Every man and women should read it.

Should be required for any human male or female.

We all have social bias and it’s interfering with our communication. This book is a great way to identify your own bias and how you can communicate differently with the opposite sex to eliminate it from your environment. Working professionally for almost 30 years, I found this book to be dead-on. It gave me actionable suggestions on how to react or change the conversation in a non-threatening, professional way and how to empower others.

really good read, opens your eyes! moves along quickly and keeps you interested in what is coming next.

Enjoyed the well researched content

I understand that she wanted to back up everything she was saying with her research and data. It was almost off putting and I almost quit listening to the book because it seemed to go on and on. I am really glad that I stuck with it because the end of the book was the most helpful with ideas that were applicable. I have recommended this book to several people.

Insightful but a little sad

This book is for men more than it is for women. As a woman in a corporate world, I experienced almost every stereotype described in the book, except related to motherhood (I don't have children). Finally, I left the corporate world to set my own company, partly due to frustration over the glass ceiling. I completely agree with the author that DE&I cannot be solved by women and minorities alone. Men must join the movement and do their part, to make the society more equitable at home and at work.