Androcentrism: what it is and how it affects women

Androcentrism is the tendency to position the experience of man at the center of explanations about the world and about individuals in a general way. It is a practice that often goes unnoticed and through which the perspective of men is assumed as the universal gaze, and even the only valid or possible one.

This has been a very present tendency in the development of western societies, likewise it has been questioned important by different people, with which, it is worth reviewing what androcentrism is and where it has been more present.

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The philosophy of who we put in the center

Something that contemporary philosophies and sciences have taught us is that there are many ways of looking at and explaining the world. When we perceive and interpret what surrounds us, and even ourselves, we do it based on a certain framework of knowledge.

We have built this framework of knowledge throughout our history and largely through the stories we have heard about ourselves and about others. That is to say, the knowledge that we have acquired has to do with the different perspectives that have been placed, or not, at the center of the same knowledge.

Thus, for example, when we speak of anthropocentrism, we refer to the tendency and philosophical conception that places the human being at the center of knowledge about the world, an issue that formally began with modern times, and that replaced theocentrism (explanations that put God at the center). Or, if we speak of "Eurocentrism" we refer to the tendency to look at and construct the world as if we were all Europeans (the experience is generalized).

These "centrisms" (the tendency to put a single experience at the center and use it to explain and understand all other experiences), includes both everyday knowledge and specialized. While they are at the base of our knowledge and practice in both fields, they are easily overlooked.

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What is androcentrism?

Returning to the previous section, we can see that "androcentrism" is a concept that refers to the tendency to explain the phenomena of the world based on the generalized experience of a single subject: the man. This phenomenon consists of incorporate into scientific, historical, academic and everyday accounts, the masculine experience at the center (That is why it is "andro", which means masculine gender; and “centrism”: in the center).

Consequently, all the other ways of knowing and living the world are incorporated into these stories only peripherally, or are not even incorporated. This applies to many fields. We can analyze, for example, androcentrism in science, androcentrism in history, medicine, education, sports, and many others.

It is a phenomenon that has emerged largely as a result of the fact that in our societies, men are the ones who have occupied the majority of public spaces, and it is fundamentally in the public where those practices and discourses have been developed that later allow us to know the world in one way or another.

These practices are, for example, science, history, sports, religion, etc. In other words, the world has been fundamentally constructed and perceived by men, with which, it is their experiences that have become historically extensive: a large part of how we see the world and how we relate to it, is made from their perspective, interests, knowledge, and general readings of everything that composes it (that is, from their worldview).

Where can we see it?

The foregoing is finally related and is visible in the most everyday, in the norms that indicate how relate to each other, how to behave, how to feel and even in the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves same.

The latter means that, far from being a phenomenon that is situated and caused specifically by the male gender, it is a process that we have all incorporated as part of the same history and the same society. And its consequence has mainly been that the experience of women and of those who do not identify with the model hegemonic of "male", remains hidden and invisible, and therefore difficult to incorporate on an equal footing. conditions.

For the same reason, there have been several people (mainly women) who have wondered, for example, Where have the women who did science been? Why are we practically only taught by the biographies of men? And the women who made history? Where are the stories of women who have lived through wars or revolutions? In fact, who have finally gone down in history? Under what models or imaginaries?

The latter has allowed it to recover more and more, and in different areas, the heterogeneity of the experiences that we share the world, and with this, different ways of relating, of perceiving and interpreting both what surrounds us and ourselves are also generated.

Bibliographic references:

• Falco, R. (2003). The archeology of gender: Spaces for women, women with space. Women's Studies Center: Universitat d'Alacant.