Androcentrism

Androcentrism (ancient Greek, ἀνήρ, "man, male") is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing male human beings or a masculine point of view at the center of one's world view, culture, and history. The related adjective is androcentric, while the practice of placing the feminine point of view at the center is gynocentrism.

The term androcentrism has been introduced as an analytic concept by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 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. According to Perkins Gilman, masculine patterns of life and masculine mindsets claimed universality while female ones were considered as deviance.

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; thus, 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 practiced a numerus clausus 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 than men.

In the majority of 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.

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