Androcentrism, or male centeredness, is the practice of placing male human beings and the way they view the world at the center of one's own view of the world. Sandra Bem defines androcentrism as the first lens through which society views gender. Seeing the world through and androcentric point of view can be either a conscious or subconscious decision. Androcentrism sees the male experience, their practices, values and thoughts as "the norm" and classifies everyone else as "the other."

Androcentrism focuses on the belief that men and masculinity are superior to women and feminity. Another related term, gender polarization, states that in androcentric societies gender polarization takes place. This means that male and female have specific behaviors and values and that it is unacceptable to deviate from what is expected of you. This perpetuates the belief that men and masculinity are superior by keeping "the other" as subordinate because deviating from what they "should be" is unacceptable.

It even goes as far as to define women in terms of how she should function in relation to men within a male dominated society and household. Women must be domesticated, satisfy the male sexual appetite and carry out reproductive functions.

So how do we eradicate androcentrism? It is a matter of ending the debate of whether or not men are fundamentally the same or fundamentally differnt. Bem has this to say: "[T]he cultural debate about sexual inequality must be reframed so that it addresses not male-female difference but how androcentric social institutions transform male-female difference into female disadvantage (from her book Lenses of Gender)."

Check out William Elliott Hazelgrove, the National Culture & Society Examiner and the Juliette Fretté, National Women's Issues Examiner.