It’s a universal experience. A classmate reiterating the discussion post you wrote. A friend condescendingly explaining politics to you. A colleague explaining the answer to a question that you never asked. Mansplaining has been found to happen in any relationship, whether it be strangers, coworkers, friends, or romantic partners (Conner et al., 2018). No woman is immune from the mansplaining epidemic.
The linguistics of the term stems from a combination of the words “man” and “explain,” which is obvious. However, the term actually originated from an essay by Rebecca Solnit entitled Men Explain Things to Me (2014). While she didn’t intend to create this trending word, her story about a man explaining her own book to her opened up conversations about the male pattern of giving condescending and unsolicited explanations to women.
But what compels men to mansplain?
A key factor is the confidence disparity between men and women. Especially in academic settings, men have more self-confidence than women (Gavinski et al., 2020). They are more likely to answer a professor’s question whether they have the right answer or not, cut off a woman to give their own insight, and mansplain topics to women even if those women are more educated on the topic. Society expects men to be assertive, so from a young age, their sense of confidence is bolstered. Conversely, from a young age, women are taught to be submissive, thus not gaining the same experience with being confident. This difference in early socialization of the sexes clearly has lasting impacts (Leaper and Friedman, 2007). The early male pattern of confidence strengthens the synaptic connections of neurons in the brain (Bloom, 2021). Simply put, the more experience a person has at being confident, the more confident they will be in the future because they have literally hard-wired their brain to be like that.
False perceptions of gendered competency also contribute to the culture of mansplaining. For instance, in Solnit’s essay, she wrote that she did not interrupt the man in her story, believing that he must have been discussing some other book that she was not aware of. In Yale University’s famous “John vs. Jennifer” study, researchers found that faculty at the top-ranked institutions nationwide were biased toward male students when evaluating identical applications (Moss-Racusin et al., 2012). This internalized sexism contributes to societal perceptions that men are inherently more capable and knowledgeable, thus making it socially acceptable for men to belittle women through mansplaining.
Oftentimes, men also mansplain to express their masculinity and assert their knowledge about academic issues (Buerkle, 2019). Stemming from arrogance and privilege, mansplaining has hurt everyone. In Hispanic culture, we use the word machismo to explain this concept of masculine pride and dominance. It’s these ideas of machismo that fuel a man’s instinct to mansplain. Not only does this offend the woman who is the target of the mansplaining, but these harmful gender norms are linked with depression, anxiety, anger, and cynical hostility for all parties involved (Nunez et al., 2017).
Mansplaining imbalances power dynamics in the workplace, ultimately leading to the exclusion of women from male-dominated career fields (Knowles, 2019). If a woman feels underappreciated in a social or professional setting, whether as a colleague or peer, this can discourage her from further pursuing her field of interest.
The science speaks for itself. Mansplaining is a real issue permeating our society that promotes harmful gender stereotypes normalizing silent women and arrogant men.
References
Bloom, S. (2021). Your brain on confidence: fake it ‘til you make it. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://deloitte.wsj.com/cmo/your-brain-on-confidence-fake-it-til-you-make-it-01616439745.
Buerkle, C. W. (2019). Adam Mansplains everything: White-hipster masculinity as covert hegemony. Southern Communication Journal, 84(3), 170–182. https://doi.org/10.1080/1041794x.2019.1575898
Chernouski, L., O’Neil, D., & Knowles, R. A. (2019). Mansplaining: The Effects of Gendered Language and Speech Practices on Women. In Proceedings of the third Purdue Linguistics, literature and Second language studies conference (pp. 30–44). essay, Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Conner, B., McCauliff, K., Shue, C., & Stamp, G. H. (2018). Explaining Mansplaining. Women & Language, 41(2), 143–167
Gavinski, K., Cleveland, E., Didwania, A. K., Feinglass, J. M., & Sulistio, M. S. (2020). Relationship between confidence, gender, and career choice in Internal Medicine. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 36(3), 662–667. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-020-06221-2
Moss-Racusin, C. A., Dovidio, J. F., Brescoll, V. L., Graham, M. J., & Handelsman, J. (2012). Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(41), 16474–16479. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1211286109
Nuñez, A., González, P., Talavera, G. A., Sanchez-Johnsen, L., Roesch, S. C., Davis, S. M., Arguelles, W., Womack, V. Y., Ostrovsky, N. W., Ojeda, L., Penedo, F. J., & Gallo, L. C. (2016). Machismo, marianismo, and negative cognitive-emotional factors: Findings from the Hispanic Community Health Study/study of Latinos sociocultural ancillary study. Journal of Latina/o Psychology, 4(4), 202–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/lat0000050