The Conversation published an excellent research-based article by two professors at Queen Mary University of London, who documented why mansplaining is a genuine phenomenon and why Reeves was right to use the term. As Louise Ashley and Elena Doldor state: Men and women can be both perpetrators and targets of mansplaining. However, the term has particular force because it reflects deeper cultural patterns in which authority is still coded as male and, more specifically, white and middle or upper class.
Early in her career, evolutionary ecologist Maydianne Andrade was frequently asked to participate in equity work. As a Black woman in academia, she was initially reluctant, sensing that her presence on such committees was just ticking a box. At conference sessions on women and people of colour in science, despite often hearing anecdotes echoing her own experience, the lack of empirical data analysing collective experiences frustrated her.
