Jennifer Mizgata* says mansplaining can negatively impact women and their careers and is a behaviour that needs to be addressed.
“We have a mansplainer in the office. All of the women on my team have noticed it, and we don’t know what to do. I tend to avoid talking to him one-on-one because I am afraid he will try to explain my job to me (again) even though I have been managing accounts for years. He is constantly repeating things that women have said without crediting them. I don’t know if he is aware of it or not. I’m worried that it’s affecting my career. We’re both account managers and should be getting the same amount of credit from our bosses, but I worry that they’re paying more attention to him just because he speaks up so much. After watching him loudly take credit for someone else’s work, it makes me not even want to speak up in meetings.”
Mansplaining is a condescending, arrogant, and entitled expression of privilege.
I’ve also seen white people acting out the same behaviours you describe to people of colour.
“Splaining” of all sorts is often done by people who expect to be recognised for sharing their opinions.
People who have historically not been heard bear the brunt of being splained to by people who are used to holding privilege and doing all of the splaining.
Workspaces that allow people to splain to other people — mansplaining or otherwise — prioritise some people’s experience over others’ and allow for people to systematically go unheard.
To create environments where people are respected and can contribute in meaningful ways, these behaviours need to be addressed and dismantled.
Mansplaining is a symptom of privilege.
Bridget Read offers a useful working definition: “Mansplaining encapsulates the sexist, condescending tendency men can exhibit in classrooms, at work, and in casual conversation to assume that they know more about a topic than a woman, no matter what it is or what her credentials are.”
Kim Fox, a senior leader at the Philadelphia Inquirer, told me: “I think mansplaining and overtalking go together; they’re kind of in the same family.”
“It’s exhausting, especially if you’re at the table with very few women.”
To mitigate the impacts of this mansplainer on you and your career, you need to address his behaviour and how it’s impacting your work.
You have more power than you think — to change the culture there and to advocate for your ideas.
Speaking up in meetings is just one place to get credit for your ideas.
If the meetings are insufferable right now, you need to make sure you’re advocating for your work in other places.
Document your pitches and big ideas in writing, whether that’s in email, memos, or planning documents.
Keep a list of your big accomplishments at work.
Share your wins and impacts with your supervisor regularly — a short email or weekly update goes a long way.
Documenting isn’t about showing off.
It’s about building a case for how you get things done and what the impact can be.
People with little self-awareness generally don’t realise that they aren’t very self-aware.
If you want to confront the mansplainer, try talking to him one-on-one.
You might find that when you do, he doesn’t realise how he’s been coming off.
Focus on how you’re feeling about his behaviour, don’t attack him.
You can draw a line about what’s okay and not okay when you talk with him.
If he starts talking over you, tuning you out, or offering advice you never asked for, you can gently but firmly tell him that you’ve got expertise to share.
Find ways to engage men in changing the culture at work.
Research shows that where men take part in addressing gender parity, 96 per cent of organisations report making progress, compared to only 30 per cent when women tackle it alone.
Changing the culture overall takes a group effort.
If women are systematically not being heard, that’s a bigger issue than one man taking up all the air in the room.
While women amplifying women works well in some situations, if there aren’t a lot of women around the table, you’re not going to be able to use this.
There’s also the possibility of creating conflict if someone feels that women are exerting pressure as a group.
This is one of the many double standards that the patriarchy reinforces.
You can start small with people you’re comfortable with.
Let them know that you want their help, both in stopping the mansplainer and educating other men about how that behaviour is affecting women.
Ask men to also amplify women in meetings, giving women credit for ideas and gently correct other men who try to own ideas that women have brought up previously.
Ask them to use phrases like, “As Mary said before” and “I remember that Mary had encouraged us to think about that a few weeks ago; I’m glad you brought it up again” to show that you’re building on previous conversations and give credit where it’s due.
By engaging male allies, you’re not just asking women to do the work of changing culture.
Sharing articles is a great way to give well-meaning men practical tips and more context, with the added bonus of grounding the conversation in something bigger than one person’s experience.
Documenting how it affects women across the organisation is helpful to reinforce that this isn’t a personal issue of yours, but it’s happening across the board.
Focus on what you can do to build a work culture in which people feel comfortable and heard.
By tackling the issue in this way, you have a bunch of people who are trying to solve a problem together about how to make sure people feel heard.
* Jen Mizgata is Director of Programs for the Online News Association. She tweets at @JMizgata.
This article first appeared at fortune.com.
