If you are a woman reading this post, the chances of you knowing what mansplaining is are very high, and I bet you’ve experienced it more often than not, too. If you are a man, you might not know what it is or if you are, you might not be consciously aware of you doing it to your colleagues. It’s okay, though. I’m here to talk about mansplaining and its occurrence in a work setting.
Many of us are familiar with the word mansplaining, but for the sake of explanation, we’ll define it. Mansplaining, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “to explain something to a woman in a condescending way that assumes she has no knowledge about the topic.” There is a thin line between explaining and mansplaining and this depends on whether opinion was asked or not.
With that being said, you can’t avoid being involved in mansplaining situations at work. One prime example of mansplaining at work is that condescending coworker you have who thinks they know more than you just because they either rank higher than you or, simply, because you’re a woman. Then there’s the coworker who doesn’t want to admit they don’t know the topic too well and instead will continue to voice inaccurate information with extreme confidence. Oh, and there’s the coworker who wants to dominate the conversation, too. This coworker will do everything they can to make everybody else feel inferior so they can take control of the conversation.
Look, I’m not here to hate men; I’m here to educate. For all my women out there, we know how fragile the male ego can be at times. So how do you explain mansplaining to a mansplainer effectively? If you, a man, have realized that you fall into one of these categories, then this is also for you. Well, the first step is to recognize whether the conversation has turned into mansplaining. A lot of men don’t actually realize they’re doing it, so the best course of action is to call them out on it. If you feel uncomfortable discussing it in public, talk to them in private and explain how their actions affected you or the people in the room. The more you call people out about their mansplaining, the more likely they are to learn from it and change their ways. If they don’t, then that says more about them than it does about you.