It’s a one week only deal: Sweden trade union Unionen has opened a mansplaining hotline for women (or men) to vent their frustrations about mansplainers in their lives.
Created as a gender equality initiative, the hotline has received hundreds of calls since its opening on Nov. 14. Mansplaining is when a man explains something obvious or over-explains it, often in a condescending way that assumes the woman is ignorant, according to Public Radio International.
Although Sweden is on the cutting edge of feminism, with official government support for gender equality, there still seem to be plenty of instances of mansplaining going on.
Union spokeswoman Jennie Zetterstrom said that callers have asked for advice on how to speak up when male colleagues ignore them or steamroll their ideas and concerns, according to The New York Times.
Other topics that have been addressed are what to do when women are excluded from business lunches or meetings, or when men only address male employees even when a woman is in charge. Men getting credit for a woman’s work is another area that the hotline has addressed.
The term mainsplaining came into being after author Rebecca Solnit published an essay ("Men Explain Things to Me") in which she related the story of a party she attended where a man tried earnestly to explain to her a book he had read — a book she in fact had written, The New York Times reported.
Some men have complained about the hotline and written negative comments on Unionen’s Facebook page about it, but Zetterstrom is clear that no one is blaming all men for the activity. “Our intention has simply been to spark an interest and start a debate at our work places and in society,” she told The New York Times in an email exchange.
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