Androcentrism takes away women's merits and assigns them to men.
Androcentrism is the position that places the man in the center . This means that social ties and vision of reality are built according to the male perspective .
Male privilege
Androcentrism encompasses various practices and conditions that privilege men to the detriment of women. In this way, the man is the subject of reference at a historical, social and cultural level, while the woman is marginalized or made invisible.
It is important to keep in mind that androcentrism goes beyond the attitude of individuals. It is a position that appears in the institutions of society and even in language .
Those who have a look characterized by androcentrism tends to reproduce gender stereotypes . In this framework, it attributes static roles to men and women, always with the woman in the background.
With androcentrism, in short, the man is placed in a place of domination and the woman is relegated to a place of subordination . This vision is linked to patriarchy and machismo and can be associated with problems such as gender violence .
Invisibilization of women
Above we mentioned the concept of invisibilization , referring to human efforts to erase all traces of countless female achievements throughout history. It is impossible to rescue the work of all the women that androcentrism made invisible, but any discovery is worth the effort.
In this framework we can mention Las Sinsombrero , a group of Spanish women born between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century who left behind brilliant works in various fields, such as literature , painting, philosophy, poetry and cinema, although the history does not recognize them and has left them in complete darkness until the beginning of the 21st century. Another example is found in the twenty writers from various generations brought together in the anthology Vindictas , published by Páginas de Espuma with the collaboration of the writer and editor Socorro Venegas .
Expansion of feminism
In recent years, however, the feminist movement has expanded globally, demanding an end to male dominance and equal rights and opportunities. This fight against androcentrism appears, for example, in the dissemination of so-called inclusive language , which opposes the use of the masculine as generic. Also in the denunciation of the wage gap that favors men, who usually earn more than women for carrying out the same tasks.
There will always be outstanding women in all areas, unfortunately for androcentrism.
This phenomenon , which is gradually gaining strength in different areas, has a long way to go, since androcentrism is a kind of virus that has been permeating our species for too long. The work of thousands of people of all sexes and genders comes together for the first time in history to combat this unfair and inaccurate vision in which the heterosexual man is the center of the world, the protagonist of the most significant pages of the story, the doctor who gives instructions to the nurse , the hero who saves the damsel .
As part of the struggle of feminism we find an unprecedented presence of women in government, science, literature, cinema, television and other fields that until just a few years ago seemed the exclusive territories of men. We are far from living in a just world, where resources and rewards are distributed based solely on the merits of each individual, regardless of the characteristics of their body or sexuality, but at least we are oriented towards that ideal and we can get closer to it. every time we reject androcentrism.