A woman has come up with a helpful term to help describe a category of sexist situations in the workplace, which involve a man repeating a female coworker’s idea only to take all the credit.
Astronomer and professor Nicole Gugliucci took to Twitter to explain that one of her friends has come up with the word ‘hepeating’.
Gugliucci defined it as ‘when a woman suggests an idea and it’s ignored, but then a guy says same thing and everyone loves it’.
Adding it to the dictionary: Astronomer and professor Nicole Gugliucci took to Twitter to explain that one of her friends has come up with the word ‘hepeating’
Examples: Gugliucci then gave two sentences using the term, showing it can be used as a verb or an adjective as in ‘Ugh, I got hepeated in that meeting again’ or ‘He totally hepeated me!’
She even helpfully provided a couple of example sentences to show how the word can be used in everyday life, such as: ‘Ugh, I got hepeated in that meeting again’ or ‘He totally hepeated me!’
The new word clearly resonated with other social media users, since Gugliucci’s original tweet has gathered more than 204,000 likes and more than 66,900 retweets.
However, Gugliucci knows some people might get some pushback when they try to introduce the concept of hepeating around them, so she added a few words of advice for her followers.
‘If anyone tries mansplaining why that’s “not a big deal”, you will be publicly shamed. Just warning you. Anyway, enjoy your new word!’ Gugliucci added.
She then wrote: ‘So many folks deny that this happens. And yet so much evidence and research shows it happens to women AND black and brown men and women.’
Testimonies: Other social media users chimed in with their own stories of hepeating, showing how the phenomenon has made its way into corporate culture (stock picture)
Long-term: One woman said she had witnessed hepeating throughout her entire careet
Leadership: Someone said a former boss would only listen to ideas after they were hepeated
Example: Another woman recounted how a man tried to tell her how to solve a water crisis, when she had in fact already explained the solution
Advice: Someone offered a clever strategy to counteract hepeating, telling women that when it happens, they can repeat what the other woman originally said while giving her credit
Going forward, the astronomer urged others to reflect about gender and race discrimination in the workplace.
Some Twitter users volunteered their own stories of hepeating, with one woman writing: ‘Told a guy how I was managing our water crisis and he hepeated back, “Yeah, but what you need to do is … [exactly what I’d just said].” ‘
Another person tweeted: ‘For all of my career I observed this on a weekly basis in any [meeting] I attended plus any astute observation was also hepeated.’
‘I had a boss who only listened to things that were hepeated,’ someone else wrote. ‘That… was not a good boss.’
Someone also offered a clever strategy to counteract any instance of hepeating, writing: ‘To beat the hepeat, women must repeat what other women say giving her credit before a man has time to hepeat it.’