Not-for-profit Stop the Party is hoping to tackle gendered language in the workplace, with a new email editor designed to promote “feminine communication.”

Miss Type, and the awareness campaign around it, was developed by VML Canada for Stop the Party timed for Women’s History Month. The editor uses AI to analyze writing and offers suggestions using what’s typically thought of as “feminine communication” to help people communicate more effectively and empathetically. Its editing suggestions to emails works to try and create more empathetic writing while promoting a team environment, using language which is often seen as weak in a business context.

VML associate creative director Sucheta Shankar initially presented the idea for Miss Type to Stop the Party, after identifying that women feel they have to self-correct their professional emails due to implied, or sometimes overt, rules around appropriate workplace language. Stop the Party founder Erika Maginn says the idea was a natural fit for the organization.

“Gendered business language impacts several aspects of the workplace experience. Women don’t apply to jobs they are qualified for if the job posting language is overtly masculine, because it sends cues that they are not the right fit,” Maginn tells strategy. 

“Professional writing tools and courses describe how to be a more effective communicator, and that usually means, make your communications more masculine.”

Stop the Party is an organization that gathers tools and educational materials in an effort to eliminate the gender wage gap. Gendered business language can contribute to this pay gap, the organization says, because women are judged based on their language in the workplace. 

Miss Type represents a slight change in how Stop the Party advertises its work and cause. Previous campaigns, Maginn says, have focused on raising awareness about the wage gap as a whole, while Miss Type focuses on one of the symptoms contributing to that issue, with “a more concrete example of how it manifests into unequal treatment in the workplace.”

Using language like “I think,” “I feel,” open-ended questions, speech softeners or apologies can hold women back in performance reviews and job postings, Maginn explains.

“Helping people understand one aspect of a multi-dimensional problem helps open the conversation and bring more awareness to the larger issue,” Maginn says.

“We’ve heard so many stories of how women have been ‘corrected’ for their email style in the past or how they sometimes share emails with their peers to make sure they are coming across the way they intend to, to try to avoid scrutiny they know they will endure.”

Maginn says the reaction to Miss Type has been positive so far with women finding it to be “validating and cathartic,” while men are finding the prevalence of this language bias in the workplace to be eye-opening. 

Stop the Party is using its social media presence and word of mouth to spread awareness of Miss Type. Maginn adds that women in advertising, marketing and beyond who are passionate about the organization’s work are also resharing it via their own social media accounts.