Who gave you the right to opine?

Do you know what “mansplaining” is?

 If not, don't worry!! Today you will be presented with the perfect example of it. 

Would you, as a lawyer, explain to a doctor how he/she should do brain surgery? Or, would you, as a marketer, tell a veterinarian how to treat a dog’s disease? Those scenarios seem so out of our reality that they might be a bit funny. Those cases are funny because they don’t happen often, or if they do, they have no type of credibility - just another crazy person giving opinions on what they shouldn’t. But ironically, Dutch women were encountered with a situation similar to these. 

What will we talk about?

Bruno Bruins, Dutch Minister of Medical Care - source: Rijksoverheid

In 2018, a three months shortage of birth control pills took many women’s sleep away. Some used social media to beg for other’s help on finding the pill, others even traveled to other countries to be able to purchase it. Jorien van der Weerd in September 2019 wrote an interesting blog post addressing the causes of this shortage and also how the situation was handled by health insurance, women, and our main focus of today’s article: the minister of medical care Bruno Bruins.  

Source: Flickr

According to Weerd, and agreed by me, the pharmaceutical companies did a good job on a PR perspective. I believe - and Heide & Simons (2015) study confirmed-  that in these situations of health issues, the organizations have to show empathy and be honest about what is going on. On the other hand, health insurances that were pointed out as main responsibles for the crisis almost did not manifest. 

A different perspective with the same information

It is interesting how Weerd mentioned the Falkheimer (2007) article to explain why the pharmaceutical industry had a nice approach to the situation. Even though I agree with her view of it, I will use this article with a new perspective: Bruno Bruins when speaking about the crisis of the birth control pills - after public pressure from doctors, pharmacies and women’s organizations - did the opposite of what Falkheimer advises. Bruins chose to not adapt to the created space, and, instead of acknowledging women’s concerns, he criticized them, providing us with a perfect example of mansplaining. He did that by stating that birth control pills are not related to medical disorders, advised women to take a different pill with the same substitute. 

Aaaah, mansplaining...

Bridges, J. (2017) describe the concept of mansplaining as:

“A portmanteau of man and explain, the term generally refers to a man explaining something to a woman in a tone perceived as condescending.”

Source: Flickr

In other (mine) words: "men trying to explain something that they have no knowledge at (like menstrual cycles) to women that face this on their day-by-day“. And here I remind you of the examples used at the beginning of this post and question: Who is Bruno Bruins - or ANY other men that not a gynecologist - to have these completely unsubstantiated arguments and diminish women’s complaints?  

Source: Flickr

Not just from a PR perspective, this communication made by the minister of medical care is bad for the government's image, but by this, there is no type of empathy neither acknowledgment by the State to this issue. Nijkrake, Gosselt, & Gutteling, (2015) explain that how an organization decides to communicate about a crisis will determine the degree of the effects of it, and how much time these scars will be there. Also, it is mentioned in the article that the way the message sent is framed, shapes how people will perceive the issue and the organization’s capability of solving them. Thus, Bruin’s mansplaining definitely did not help to shape a good and stable image of the problem itself and the government. It is important to note here that not just what is said matters, but who says it and in which context. 

About the author:

My name is Nicole Rosset and I'm a Brazilian 25 years old girl facing the challenge of living in The Netherlands and doing a Master in Communication Science. What drives me into doing this program is combining two loves that I have: marketing and psychology. Studying human behavior interests me and this is what I want to do for my life.