Androcentrism

Androcentrism (Ancient Greek, ἀνήρ, "man, male"[1]) is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing a masculine point of view at the center of one's world view, culture, and history, thereby culturally marginalizing femininity. The related adjective is androcentric, while the practice of placing the feminine point of view at the center is gynocentric.

Androcentrism has been described as a pervasive form of sexism.[2][3] However, it has also been described as a movement centered on, emphasizing, or dominated by males or masculine interests.[4]

Etymology

The term androcentrism was introduced by Lester Frank Ward in his book Pure Sociology.[5] In his approach from biology to sociology, he argued that the life evolves from gynaecocracy to androcentrism. He wrote that "the male sex is viewed as primary, and the female is secondary", as a consequence of human evolution, but that in evolutionary biology, the female organism is primary as a means of procreation (1914, 292).[6] After Charlotte Perkins Gilman heard him in a scientific debate, herself acknowledged his contribution in the preface to the first edition of her book, The Man-Made World; or, Our Androcentric Culture,[7] published in 1911. Following the ideas of Lester Frank Ward ideas, Perkins Gilman argued that women were the dominant sex and only needed men for fertilisation. As insects and plants, women were originally primary to nature. Androcentrism was a consequence of human developmen in society, "based on an irrational glorification of the trivial male fertilizing function, had “resulted in arresting the development of half the world.”[8] Therefore, androcentrism can be understood as a societal fixation on masculinity from which 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 patterns were considered as deviance.[9] She used these ideas in her essay The Man-Made World and her fictional book Herland,[10] where an isolated group of women still remain in a gynecological society. In Herland, this community based on feminine principles is perfectly harmonious, rather than the current conflict-ridden androcentric society.

Science

Until the 19th century, women were effectively barred from higher education in Western countries.[11] For over 300 years, Harvard admitted only white men from prominent families.[11] Many universities, such as for example the University of Oxford, consciously practiced a numerus clausus and restricted the number of female undergraduates they accepted.[12] Due to the later access of women to university and academic life, the participation of women in fundamental research is marginal. The basic principles in sciences, even human sciences, are hence predominantly formed by men.

Medicine

There is a gender health data gap and women are systematically discriminated against and misdiagnosed in medicine.[13] Early medical research has been carried out nearly exclusively on male corpses.[14] Women were considered "small men"[15] and not investigated. To this day, clinical studies are frequently confirmed for both sexes even though only men have participated and the female body is often not considered in animal tests, even when "women diseases" are concerned. However, female and male bodies differ, all the way up to the cell level. The same diseases can have different symptoms in the sexes, calling for different treatment, and medicines can work completely differently, including different side effects.[16] Since male symptoms are much more prominent, women are symptomatically under- and misdiagnosed, and have for example a 50% increased risk to die from a heart attack. Here, the male and known symptoms are chest-, and shoulder pain, the female symptoms are upper abdominal pain and nausea.

Literature

Research by Dr. David Anderson and Dr. Mykol Hamilton has documented the under-representation of female characters in a sample of 200 books that included top-selling children's books from 2001 and a seven-year sample of Caldecott award-winning books.[17] 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 on the male characters and their experiences of life.[17]

The arts

In 1985, a group of female artists from New York, the Guerrilla Girls, 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.[18]

Over 20 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%).[19] Saltz also found a significant under-representation of female artists in the six other art institutions he studied.[20]

Generic male language

Further information: Male as norm
See also: Gender-neutral language

In literature, the use of masculine language to refer to men, women, intersex, and non-binary people may indicate a male or androcentric bias in society where men are seen as the 'norm', and women, intersex, and non-binary people are seen as the 'other'. Philosophy scholar Jennifer Saul argues that the use of male generic language marginalizes women, intersex, and non-binary people in society.[21] In recent years, some writers have started to use more gender-inclusive language (for instance, using the pronouns they/them and using gender-inclusive words like humankind, person, partner, spouse, businessperson, firefighter, chairperson, and police officer).

Many studies have shown that male generic language is not interpreted as truly gender-inclusive.[22] Psychological research has shown that, in comparison to unbiased terms such as "they" and "humankind", masculine terms lead to male-biased mental imagery in the mind of both the listener and the communicator.

Three studies by Mykol Hamilton show that there is not only a male → people bias but also a people → male bias.[23] 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. Hamilton 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. Further, of the two options for neutral language, neutral language that explicitly names women (e.g., "he or she") reduces androcentrism more effectively than neutral language that makes no mention of gender whatsoever (e.g., "human").[24][25]

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."[26]

Men's language will be judged as the 'norm' and anything that women do linguistically will be judged negatively against this.[27] The speech of a socially subordinate group will be interpreted as linguistically inadequate against that used by socially dominant groups.[28] It has been found that women use more hedges and qualifiers than men. Feminine speech has been viewed as more tentative and has been deemed powerless speech. This is based on the view that masculine speech is the standard.

Generic male symbols

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 a man.[29][30]

Depictions of skeletons typically have male anatomy rather than female, even when the character of the skeleton is meant to be female.[31]

Restroom symbols show the male as the default person, while the female is identified by a skirt.[32]

Impacts

Men are more severely impacted by androcentric thinking.[2] However, the ideology has substantial effects on the way of thinking of everyone within it. In a 2022 study, in which 3815 people were shown a selection of 256 images containing illusory faces (objects, in which humans see faces), 90% of the objects were on average by the participants identified as male.[33]

See also

References

  1. ^ Liddell, Henry G.; Scott, Robert; Stuart Jones, Henry (1940). A Greek–English Lexicon. Roderick McKenzie. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC 499596825.
  2. ^ a b Bailey, April H.; LaFrance, Marianne; Dovidio, John F. (July 2020). "Implicit androcentrism: Men are human, women are gendered". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 89: 103980. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2020.103980.
  3. ^ Hibbs, Carolyn (2014), "Androcentrism", in Teo, Thomas (ed.), Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, New York, NY: Springer New York, pp. 94–101, doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_16, ISBN 978-1-4614-5582-0, retrieved 23 January 2024
  4. ^ "Androcentrism.com".
  5. ^ "Pure Sociology: A Treatise on the Origin and Spontaneous Development of Society.Lester F. Ward". American Journal of Sociology. 8 (5): 710. March 1903. doi:10.1086/211176. ISSN 0002-9602.
  6. ^ Wilson, Robert H. (1982). "Lester F. Ward and the Theory of Gynaecocracy". International Social Science Review. 57 (3): 145–148. ISSN 0278-2308. JSTOR 41881334.
  7. ^ Gilman, Charlotte Perkins (1 January 2002). The Man-Made World; Or, Our Androcentric Culture.
  8. ^ "Feminism, Social Science, and the Meanings of Modernity: The Debate on the Origin of the Family in Europe and the United States, 1860–1914 | History Cooperative". 21 June 2022. Retrieved 17 December 2024.
  9. ^ Perkins Gilman, Charlotte (1911). The man-made world: or, Our androcentric culture. New York: Charlton. OCLC 988836210.
  10. ^ "Herland (novel)", Wikipedia, 2 December 2024, retrieved 17 December 2024
  11. ^ a b "A History of Women in Higher Education | BestColleges". www.bestcolleges.com. Retrieved 23 January 2024.
  12. ^ Frances Lannon (30 October 2008). "Her Oxford". Times Higher Education.
  13. ^ Lego, Vanessa di (2023). "Uncovering the gender health data gap". Cadernos de Saúde Pública. 39 (7): e00065423. doi:10.1590/0102-311xen065423. ISSN 1678-4464. PMC 10494683. PMID 37585901.
  14. ^ Learmonth, Imogen (9 September 2020). "The gender health gap: why women's bodies shouldn't be a medical mystery". Thred Website. Retrieved 23 January 2024.
  15. ^ Anita Thomas, Alexandra Kautzky-Willer: Gender Medizin. 2015.
  16. ^ Kurt W. Alt, Silke Strohmenger, Ingelore Welpe: Geschlecht und Gender in der Medizin. In: Anthropologischer Anzeiger. September 2005, Jahrg. 63, H. 3, S. 257–269.
  17. ^ a b Hamilton, Mykol C.; Anderson, David; Broaddus, Michelle; Young, Kate (December 2006). "Gender stereotyping and under-representation of female characters in 200 popular children's picture books: a twenty-first century update". Sex Roles. 55 (11–12): 757–765. doi:10.1007/s11199-006-9128-6. S2CID 146234748.
  18. ^ Guerilla Girls poster 1989. Guerrilla Girls. Archived from the original on 25 November 2013. Retrieved 17 March 2011.
  19. ^ Saltz, Jerry (18 November 2007). "Where are All the Women? On MoMA's Identity Politics". New York. Retrieved 17 March 2011.
  20. ^ Saltz, Jerry (17 November 2007). "Data: Gender Studies. Is MoMA the worst offender? We tallied how women fare in six other art-world institutions". New York. Retrieved 17 March 2011.
  21. ^ Saul, Jennifer (2004). "Feminist philosophy of language". plato.stanford.edu. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online). Retrieved 17 March 2011.
  22. ^ Studies:
  23. ^ Hamilton, Mykol C. (November 1991). "Masculine bias in the attribution of personhood: people = male, male = people". Psychology of Women Quarterly. 15 (3): 393–402. doi:10.1111/j.1471-6402.1991.tb00415.x. S2CID 143533483.
  24. ^ Khosroshahi, Fatemeh (December 1989). "Penguins don't care, but women do: A social identity analysis of a Whorfian problem". Language in Society. 18 (4): 505–525. doi:10.1017/S0047404500013889. S2CID 145728097.
  25. ^ Bailey, April H.; LaFrance, Marianne (June 2017). "Who counts as human? Antecedents to androcentric behavior". Sex Roles. 76 (11–12): 682–693. doi:10.1007/s11199-016-0648-4. S2CID 148460313.
  26. ^ Slocum, Sally (2012) [1975], "Woman the gatherer: male bias in anthropology", in McGee, R. Jon; Warms, Richard L., eds. (11 July 2011). Anthropological theory: an introductory history. New York: McGraw-Hill. pp. 399–407. ISBN 9780078034886.
  27. ^ Mooney, A., & Evans, B. (2019). Language, Power, and Society: An Introduction.
  28. ^ Wolfram, W. and Schilling-Estes, N. (1998) American English: Dialect and Variation. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
  29. ^ Wade, Lisa (4 May 2009). "Default avatars: a collection". The Society Pages | Sociological Images. University of Minnesota. Retrieved 17 March 2011.
  30. ^ Bailey, April H.; LaFrance, Marianne (2016). "Anonymously male: Social media avatar icons are implicitly male and resistant to change". Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace. 10 (4): 8. doi:10.5817/CP2016-4-8.
  31. ^ Hughes, Katie (19 August 2019). "Skeletons and Gender Perception".
  32. ^ "The Absurdity and Influence of Restroom Symbols". Everybody Skirts. 25 February 2024. Retrieved 9 November 2024.
  33. ^ Wardle, Susan G.; Paranjape, Sanika; Taubert, Jessica; Baker, Chris I. (February 2022). "Illusory faces are more likely to be perceived as male than female". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119 (5). Bibcode:2022PNAS..11917413W. doi:10.1073/pnas.2117413119. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 8812520. PMID 35074880.

Literature