Androcentrism
Encyclopedia
Androcentrism is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing male human beings or the masculine point of view at the center of one's view of the world and its culture and history. The related adjective is androcentric, while the practice of placing the feminine point of view at the center is gynocentrism
Gynocentrism
Gynocentrism is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing female human beings or the feminine point of view at the center of one's world view...

.

Origin of the term

The term androcentrism has been introduced as an analytic concept by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform...

 in the scientific debate. Perkins Gilman described androcentric practices in society and the resulting problems in her investigation on The Man-Made World; or, Our Androcentric Culture, published in 1911. Thus androcentrism can be understood as a societal fixation on masculinity whereby all things originate. Under androcentrism, masculinity is normative and all things outside of masculinity are defined as other
Other
The Other or Constitutive Other is a key concept in continental philosophy; it opposes the Same. The Other refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is Other than the initial concept being considered...

. According to Perkins Gilman, masculine patterns of life and masculine mindsets claimed universality
Universality (philosophy)
In philosophy, universalism is a doctrine or school claiming universal facts can be discovered and is therefore understood as being in opposition to relativism. In certain religions, universality is the quality ascribed to an entity whose existence is consistent throughout the universe...

 while female ones were considered as deviance
Deviance (sociology)
Deviance in a sociological context describes actions or behaviors that violate cultural norms including formally-enacted rules as well as informal violations of social norms...

.

Education

In the past boys and men were expected to have better formal education than girls and women. Girls and women were less frequently able to read and write than boys and men were. Therefore written material tended to reflect the male point of view. Well into the second half of the 20th century young men entered university far more frequently than young women. Some universities consciously practised a numerus clausus
Numerus clausus
Numerus clausus is one of many methods used to limit the number of students who may study at a university. In many cases, the goal of the numerus clausus is simply to limit the number of students to the maximum feasible in some particularly sought-after areas of studies.However, in some cases,...

 and restricted the number of female undergraduates they accepted. Therefore "educated opinion" risked being androcentric. Today women in industrialized countries have far better access to education.

Literature

In Western societies today, books, magazine articles and book reviews are written predominantly by men and therefore may privilege a male viewpoint. For instance, in 2010 only 37% of the books published by Random House were written by women, and only 17% of the books reviewed by The New York Review of Books were written by women. Research conducted by VIDA in 2010 found that men wrote the vast majority of articles and book reviews in leading magazines in the United States and the UK.

Research by Dr. David Anderson and Dr. Mykol Hamilton has documented the under-representation of female characters in 200 top-selling children's books from 2001 and a seven-year sample of Caldecott award-winning books. There were nearly twice as many male main characters as female main characters, and male characters appeared in illustrations 53 percent more than female characters. Most of the plot-lines centered around the male characters and their experiences of life.

TV and film

The vast majority of films are written and directed by men. This may result in an androcentric bias, with most films (and film characters) being created from a male perspective. Of the top 250 grossing films in 2007, 82% had no female writers and only 6% had a female director. 70% of all film reviews published in the USA are written by men. Therefore, not only do men have more influence than women over the story-line and characters of most films, they also have the most influence when it comes to publicly reviewing. Because most film reviewers are male, androcentric films (films from a masculine viewpoint) may tend to receive more glowing reviews than female-centric films.

A 2009 study conducted by the Geena Davis Institute analysed 122 children's films (released between 2006 and 2009) and found both a male bias 'behind the scenes' of the films as well as a male bias in the content of the films. Of this sample, 93% of directors, 87% of writers, and 80% of producers were male. Therefore, an androcentric (male) perspective was dominant in most of the films. The report argued that the male dominance behind most of the films was connected to a male bias (an androcentric bias) in the content of the films themselves. For instance, the majority (70.8%) of the speaking characters in these films were also male, and female characters were much more likely than male characters to be portrayed as beautiful. The report argued that "cinematic females are valued more than cinematic males for their looks, youthfulness, and sexy demeanor".

The arts

In 1985 a group of female artists from New York, the Guerrilla Girls
Guerrilla Girls
Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous group of feminists devoted to fighting against sexism within the visual fine art world internationally. Started in New York City in 1985 to protest gender and racial inequality in the art world, members are known for the gorilla masks they wear to keep their...

, began to protest the under-representation of female artists. According to them, male artists and the male viewpoint continued to dominate the visual art world. In a 1989 poster (displayed on NYC buses) titled "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?" they reported that less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections of the Met. Museum were women, but 85% of the nudes were female.

Over twenty years later, women were still under-represented in the art world. In 2007, Jerry Saltz (journalist from the New York Times) criticized the Museum of Modern Art for undervaluing work by female artists. Of the 400 works of art he counted in the Museum of Modern Art, only 14 were by women (3.5%). Saltz also found a significant under-representation of female artists in the six other art institutions he studied.

Generic male language

In literature, the use of masculine language to refer to both men and women may indicate a male or androcentic bias in society where men are seen as the 'norm' and women as the 'other'. Some examples are forms of address (such as "Hey guys" or "Dear Sirs") and masculine nouns and pronouns (such as 'mankind', 'man' or 'he') to refer to both men and women. Philosophy scholar Jennifer Saul argued that the use of male generic language marginalizes women in society. In recent years, some writers have started to use more gender-inclusive language (for instance, using the phrase "he or she", and using gender-inclusive words like humankind, person, businessperson, fire-fighter, chairperson and police-officer).

Many Latin-based languages in the world are also male-centric. For instance, in Spanish the word padres (plural of 'father') means 'parents', abuelos (plural of 'grandfather') means 'grandparents', and chicos means either 'boys' or 'children'.

Many studies have shown that male generic language is not interpreted as truly 'gender-inclusive.' Psychological research has shown that, in comparison to unbiased terms such as “he or she” and “humankind,” masculine terms lead to male-biased mental imagery in the mind of both the listener and the communicator.

Three studies by Mykol Harrison show that there is not only a male → people bias but also a people → male bias. In other words, a masculine bias remains even when people are exposed to only gender neutral language (although the bias is lessened). In two of her studies, half of the participants (after exposure to gender neutral language) had male-biased imagery but the rest of the participants displayed no gender bias at all. In her third study, only males showed a masculine-bias (after exposure to gender neutral language) — females showed no gender bias. Harrison asserted that this may be due to the fact that males have grown up being able to think more easily than females of “any person” as generic “he,” since “he” applies to
them.

Feminist anthropologist Sally Slocum argues that there has been a longstanding male bias in anthropological thought as evidenced by terminology used when referring to society, culture and humankind. According to Slocum, "All too often the word 'man' is used in such an ambiguous fashion that it is impossible to decide whether it refers to males or just the human species in general, including both males and females."

Generic male symbols

The default images in Western society for 'man' and for 'human being' are usually the same. For example, the 'walking person' light (that indicates when it is safe for pedestrians to cross the road) looks the same as the symbol for 'man' on the door of a male restroom. The typical symbol for 'woman' looks quite different (with long hair and a triangle body to indicate she is wearing a dress).

On the internet, many avatars are gender-neutral (such as an image of a smiley face). However, when an avatar is human and discernibly gendered, it usually appears to be male. This indicates that the image of a man (but not that of a woman) is considered to be a normative representation of humankind in general.

Politics and the law

In 2008 Rwanda became the first country in the world to have a female-majority Parliament (56% of seats). As of March 2011, Rwanda remains the only country in the world to have a female majority Parliament.

Most Parliaments in the world today are made up primarily of men; therefore there may be some androcentric bias (a privileging
Privilege (social inequality)
Privilege is a way of framing issues surrounding social inequality, focusing as much on the advantages that one group accrues from society as on the disadvantages that another group experiences.- Group role :...

 of male experiences and perspectives) in law-making. As of 31 January 2011, the global average of women in Parliament is 19%. In the Nordic countries the proportion of females in Parliament is high — about 41% on average — however the representation of women in Parliament in many other Western countries is much lower (for example, the proportion of women in Congress in the United States of America is 17%, and in the United Kingdom it is 22%).

Christianity

Much of the development of Christianity, historically and today, has been primarily driven by men — therefore our understanding of Christianity and the Bible may come from a more masculine perspective.

The vast majority of Bibles available today were translated mainly by men. For instance, 93% of the New International Version (NIV) translators were male and 86% of the NRSV translators were male. In most churches today, women are allowed to be leaders and to preach; however, the majority of churches are still led by a man, and most sermons are still delivered by men. Therefore, arguably, many Christian teachings come from a more masculine or androcentric viewpoint, and women's experiences and viewpoints can be marginalised.

About half of the Bible translations today use male generic words exclusively in gender-inclusive context (words such as 'mankind', 'man, 'forefathers' and 'he'), arguably marginalizing women and making them invisible. Some of the more recent translations of the Bible have tried to use gender-accurate language where appropriate in the context. The 1989 New Revised Standard Version
New Revised Standard Version
The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible is an English translation of the Bible released in 1989 in the USA. It is a thorough revision of the Revised Standard Version .There are three editions of the NRSV:...

, NRSV, and the 2005 Today's New International Version
Today's New International Version
Today's New International Version is an English translation of the Bible developed by the Committee on Bible Translation. The CBT also developed the New International Version in the 1970s. The TNIV is based on the NIV. It is explicitly Protestant like its predecessor; the deuterocanonical books...

, TNIV) are examples.

All of the known authors of the Bible are male. Most well-known biblical characters are men, and women make up only 14% of named characters in the bible (1,181 men are named in the Bible but only 188 women are named). Therefore, the Bible is largely written from a male perspective and the experiences of women in the Bible are either invisible or are interpreted by men.

Sports

Sports media channels such as ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....

 and Fox Sports
Fox Sports (USA)
Fox Sports is a division of the Fox Broadcasting Company . It was formed in 1994 with Fox's acquisition of broadcast rights to National Football League games...

, as well as sports magazines like Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...

, basically only appeal to a male audience. Additionally, this is reflected by its advertisers who almost exclusively target men.

Literature

  • Fox Keller, Evelyn
    Evelyn Fox Keller
    Evelyn Fox Keller is an American physicist, author and feminist. She is currently a Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Keller has also taught at the State University of New York at Purchase, New York University and in the department of...

    . Reflections on Gender and Science. Yale University Press, 1985.
  • Ginzberg, Ruth. “Uncovering Gynocentric Science,” in Feminism and Science, ed. Nancy Tuana, (Bloomington, IN: IUP, 1989): 69-84
  • Harding, Sandra
    Sandra Harding
    Sandra G. Harding is an American philosopher of feminist and postcolonial theory, epistemology, research methodology and philosophy of science.She has contributed to standpoint theory and to the multicultural study of science...

    and Merrill B. Hintikka, ed. Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. 1983.
  • Harding, Sandra. The Science Question in Feminism. 1986.
  • Harding, Sandra. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women's Lives. 1991.

External links

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