Look, I've been thinking about this a lot and I've decided there's only one thing for it: we're going to have to invent a new language. We need a subsidiary language, an offshore language, if you will, to deal with certain elements of life that English has proved incapable of handling.

There are many things beyond English's grasp, and many of these are handled with aplomb by the German language. The best one, of course, is "Kummerspeck", which is translated as "excess weight due to emotional overeating", but I prefer the literal translation of the term, which is "grief bacon". Who among us in the English-speaking world has not been in need of some grief bacon?

But grief bacon, sadly, is not our subject today. Rather, it's how women in authority – or, specifically, female bosses – are discussed, because English is incapable of dealing with this crazy female phenomenon, as demonstrated by the palaver following the sacking last week of Jill Abramson as the executive editor of the New York Times.

I have no hot exclusive insight whatsoever into whether Abramson's sacking was to do with the New York Times's sexism (as many initially claimed) or her mismanagement of staff (as the New York Times has insisted). But then, plenty of other folk with a similar lack of insight have argued that one can't cry "sexism" every time a woman is sacked. Absolutely, let's not play the Defcon 1-like feminist card here before necessary. But I can say with utmost certainty that the language used to describe her has long been enthrallingly sexist. Maybe Abramson's behaviour was outrageous, but it's notable how the complaints keep returning to the personal, and how eager they were to do so from the start, as they always do with women who are bosses and almost never do with men.

Abramson, it has been reported, was "brusque", "pushy", "mercurial". Take a minute to think if you have ever heard any of those words applied to men, let alone in a way that suggests a sackable offence. Spoiler alert! No you haven't. One source complained that Abramson "has this disapproving look on her face all the time", raising the thrilling possibility that Abramson was sacked for having Bitchy Resting Face. The publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger issued a statement over the weekend furiously denying that Abramson was sacked because she was a woman and that it was instead due to her "arbitrary decision-making, a failure to consult and bring colleagues with her, inadequate communication and public mistreatment of colleagues".

It feels almost too obvious to point out that all of those complaints can be aimed right back at Sulzberger, specifically in relation to his generally astonishing, notably brusque and especially brutal firing of Abramson. But as my colleague Emily Bell wrote, "no one will castigate him for being insufficiently warm and friendly, because no one expects him to be." No word yet on the state of Sulzberger's Bitchy Resting Face.

As it happened, the editor of Le Monde, Natalie Nougayerede, was sacked on the same day as Abramson, and she also happened to be a woman. She, like Abramson, was criticised for poor communication skills ("very difficult to talk to"), her bossiness ("authoritarian") and her brusque nature ("Putin-like"). Fancy the coincidence! As former national news editor at the Washington Post Susan B Glasser wrote this weekend: "Just about every single thing that was said about Jill Abramson and Natalie Nougayrede was said about me. That I was difficult and hard to understand and divisive ... I have never read a story that I can recall about [a male editor's] 'temperament' ... Do you really believe that all these women were temperamentally incompatible with their positions?"

That women in positions of authority face a double bind – be tough and get called bitchy, or be soft and accused of being weak – is not news. But it's easy to forget how tight this double bind is. On Monday the New York Times – yes, back to them again – reported that the Democratic party (you know, the liberal one) had never elected a single female governor in the north-east (you know, the liberal part of the country). Plenty of Democratic women have been elected to the Senate, but senators are part of a collective body, whereas governors stand alone.

"Convincing voters that women can serve where the buck stops is still a hurdle," said one academic. Not only are voters and companies generally less convinced of women's buck-stopping abilities (women make up only 17% of board directors of the FTSE 100 companies, remember), but a report found that those few who are hired as CEOs are also far more likely to be swiftly fired. A company will hire a woman when it needs saving (as the New York Times did), because it reflects well on the company to have a woman in charge (as it did with the New York Times), but they will then be pushed off "the glass cliff" first, as women are still seen as "outsiders".

"We tend to like those that are most like us," one of the report's authors said. "Sadly, company boards are still mostly men, and they're more inclined to pull the trigger on women if things aren't working out."

So as you can see, a change is needed. To be honest, I'm not really convinced that changing a language can fix systemic sexism – playing around with words in such situations often feels like putting up new wallpaper over damp and calling the problem solved – but, hell, it's a start.

Term for "tough – I don't want to say bitch exactly, but, you know, bossy. Insists on having things done her way, which can be a drag": boss.

Term for "not always happy and smiling, which, personally, I find aesthetically upsetting": boss.

Term for "female boss who doesn't always talk in the sweet dulcet tones of angels with the patience of a bank of saints": boss.

Term for "boss who is not a man": boss.

Term for "excess weight due to emotional overeating": grief bacon.