Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual (for a Sexist Workplace), by Jessica Bennett
Do you have a mansplainer in your office? How about a “bropropriator” (a man who takes credit for his female team members’ work) or an “undermine-her” (a guy who patronizes women with terms like “kiddo” or “young lady”)? Yes, journalist Jessica Bennett’s new book is packed with corny—if catchy—names for the sexism many women encounter at work, but her advice for dealing with this bad behavior is serious. Inspired by her own group of friends, who met monthly to discuss their professional victories and frustrations, Bennett has assembled a novel handbook for the modern working woman.
Like a cubicle anthropologist, she lays out a taxonomy of common office saboteurs, ways women inadvertently play into sexist stereotypes, and career-stalling pitfalls, like getting sucked into “office housework” or being branded “too nice” to lead.
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More important, Bennett provides readers with a litany of strategies for overcoming these hurdles. While women who have managed to battle their way into the upper ranks have likely worked much of this out for themselves, Feminist Fight Club is a worthy addition to the library of any young female professional or frustrated middle manager—or male coworker who wants to help.
Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World, by Joann S. Lublin
What do you do if a senior manager at your company propositions you for sex and then tells your colleagues that you slept with him after you turned him down? Carly Fiorina relates undergoing that ordeal—and how she sailed past it to land in the C-suite—in this new compendium of wisdom for the working woman. Author Joann Lublin (one of the first female reporters at the Wall Street Journal) has compiled a repository of advice on a broad spectrum of issues faced by women in corporate America today—and the book is chock-full of personal anecdotes gleaned from hours of interviews with 52 powerful businesswomen.
While the narrative can at times seem disjointed, the stories Lublin recounts will be funny and informative to any aspiring exec. Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman discusses the “scheduling wars” and career tradeoffs between herself and her husband. Hearsay Social founder Clara Shih notes the many times she’s been mistaken for a server at tech industry events, and former Yahoo chief Carol Bartz shares the best way to stand in a room full of men: “Spread your feet and put your ‘bitch wings’ on.”
To see the full Most Powerful Women 2016 list, visit fortune.com/most-powerful-women. For more, see the Most Powerful Women International list.
A version of this article appears in the September 15, 2016 issue of Fortune with the headline “A Reading List for Powerful Women.” We’ve included affiliate links into this article. Click here to learn what those are.
