Mansplaining

In this paper, we examine a common behavior that constitutes a significant barrier to women's advancement in organizations: mansplaining. Specifically, we suggest that mansplaining-men's tendency to explain things to expert women-is a phenomenon that occurs when men, who have objectively less knowledge than the experts in that domain, do not accept women's expertise or advice, with the erroneous assumption that they know more about it than the women experts they are talking to. Four studies demonstrate that women experts receive more explaining from men due to skepticism regarding their competence and perceived expertise. Mansplaining causes women experts to exert more effort to explain their knowledge, reduces their performance and results in suboptimal decision making for mansplainers.