Using the word woman to refer to an adult female human, as people have done for millennia, has become a radical act. Some people actually consider it hateful and exclusionary to do so. Many are vilifying and trying to silence anyone who uses this definition of woman. Women who do, as Joanne K. Rowling did in June 2020, face a backlash that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. Some women have been fired from their job and many women have been subjected to misogynist slurs on social media and faced ostracism. What is a Woman? was written in response to a discussion that has become absurd. It shines a spotlight on lexicographers’ definitions of what it literally means to be a woman as a reminder that words and their agreed upon definitions matter. It aims to lift women's spirits.

Fifty percent of the author’s profits from the sale of this book will go to Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, Canada’s longest standing rape crisis centre, which lost its city funding due to its woman-only policy.

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