The Effects of an Androcentric Culture on Language

Say one day you are sitting on the couch, minding your own business, when you hear the
doorbell ring. Your friend gets up to check the door and comes back a few moments later with a
package. You ask, Was that the mailman? To which your friend replies jokingly, If it wasnt,
why would he have left this on the doorstep?
Did you notice anything about this seemingly innocuous interaction? Maybe you made
note of your use of the word mailman rather than mailperson or mail carrier. Or did you pick
up on your friend referring to this person as he, when in fact they could have been a man or a
woman? Does it really matter?
Questions like these have been brewing at the back of my mind for a while now. I
remember one instance several years ago with my brother of us using language like this while
watching silly animal videos. We would say things like, Look at him go! and, Isnt he cute?
when referring to animals that we had no actual idea what gender they might be. I noticed our
commentary and asked him if he thought those animals were actually male, but he replied that he
was just calling them he and him because it felt natural. He asked in response if I labeled
animals as female because I was a girl, but I told him that wasnt the case. It felt like I always
assumed something or someone was male until proven otherwise. I asked around and others
seemed to share this feeling, even if they hadnt really thought about it before then. Forgetting
about this for a long time, it wasnt until recently that I, while doing research for a previous
English project, came across some data that brought the subject to the forefront of my mind
again. As I was reading about a study of gender representation in childrens books I noticed they
used data from another study to justify their gender coding process, If we believed that children

were likely to interpret a character as male, we coded it as malebased on peoples tendency to

assume that a person or animal is male in the absence of strong cues that it is female. (Gender
Stereotyping and Under-Representation of Female Characters in 200 Popular Childrens Picture
Books: a Twenty-First Century Update, 2006). This was concluded after making note of peoples
assumptions of the perceived gender of toys, but this logic still holds true in most other contexts.
After doing a bit of research myself, I found a word to describe this effect: androcentrism. The
Mariam-Webster Dictionary defines it as such:
androcentric
adjective: dominated by or emphasizing masculine interests or a masculine point of view
(Merriam-Webster Online, 2016).
There are many aspects of our culture that lead us to adopt a more male-centric
view of the world. The under-representation of women is one of them, having been welldocumented in many instances. One study of gender biases in media news found that, Women
are underrepresented in the media throughout the world, to varying degrees and depending on
region and news topic. (She and He in News Media Messages: Pronoun Use Reflects
Gender Biases in Semantic Contexts, 2014). Certain descriptive biases exist in the very language
we use, such as category labels. For example, a man that plays basketball for a living may be
described as an athlete, while a woman in the same profession would be described as a female
athlete. For many societal roles that traditionally have been male-dominated (which are most
roles outside of the home), women are seen as the exception to subconscious rules like athlete =
male and must be defined as such. This applies to other stereotypically gendered societal roles,
like doctor = male, fire-fighter = male, professor = male, etc. (Of course there are roles that are
typically seen as being female, such as nurse = female or teacher = female, but the frequency of

female-centric roles are fewer and are more often based on traditional views of women being
nurturing or care-giving, and put women in roles that are subservient to men or lacking as much
expertise). Because people generally need strong indications that something is female to label it
as such, females get rounded down to stereotypical and somewhat limiting standards to
communicate clearly their gender. The same study had this to say about category labeling:
Such explicit labeling is in line with norm theory, in that group comparisons are based on one group being
the norm and the other group being the effect to be explainedsuch linguistic normativity may also
reinforce gender stereotypes. This type of communication has also been called essentializing language
because, for example, it presents woman as representatives of their gender more often than men. (She
and He in News Media Messages: Pronoun Use Reflects Gender Biases in Semantic Contexts, 2014).

Social norms are learned through social interaction and may be subconsciously acquired
behaviors or thoughts. In this context, males are seen as the standard or average person, while
someone being described as female limits that person to the context of their gender. Even with
social progression slowly allowing more equal opportunity for female success, a female lawyer
for example is something still seen as unusual to a degree, and necessitates clarification. As for
essentializing language, something called the homogeneity effect comes into play, such
that women as a group are described as more similar, than is the case for men as a group.
(She and He in News Media Messages: Pronoun Use Reflects Gender Biases in Semantic
Contexts, 2014).
Common gendered words like mailman indicate that the subject is male, but the word
has become synonymous with the profession. Our expectations of gender are highly ingrained to
our thoughts and verbal processes. When reading, we anticipate the gender of a subject by the
context of their work, environment, or other labels without giving much thought to it. This is

supported by research done on how readers would react when encountering word-specific gender
stereotypes, which found:
Processing is more difficult when the gender of the pronoun mismatches the gender stereotype of the
antecedent. When the comprehender encounters the pronoun with a different gender than that introduced by
the antecedent, the comprehender must revise the mental model to reflect the gender indicated by the
pronoun. (Comprehending Pronouns: A Role for Word-Specific Gender Stereotype Information, 2003).

The general rule of thumb for referring to a subject of unknown gender has traditionally
been to refer to them as he or him or variations thereof. This can be seen in the writing of
many hypothetical texts that assume the reader or subject to be male unless stated otherwise. Is
there a solution to this problem of gendered, male-centric language? Possibly, but not without
some complications. As is stated in an analysis of the use of singular they:
English lacks a sex-indefinite pronoun for third person singular and for the past two hundred and fifty
years prescriptive grammars have been recommending the use of he to mean he or she. However,
prescriptive he is inadequate for this purpose since contemporary speakers neither use nor comprehend
prescriptive he consistently to mean he or she. (On the Goals, Principles, and Procedures for Prescriptive
Grammar: Singular They, 1980).

Saying he or she in every instance that the subjects gender is unknown is awkward and
unwieldy even in text, let alone said aloud. I myself have used singular, prescriptive they
several times as I have been writing this, and have done my best to avoid confusion as to who or
what I am referring to. Though prescriptive use of he and him can be substituted with they
and them with general ease, and as they is the most popularly used gender neutral pronoun,
its use in this way is opposed of for a few reasons. When referring to multiple subjects,
confusion can arise as to whom is being referred specifically, as they is regarded as being

plural. In attempts to be more inclusive of those who identify as a nonbinary gender, the
invention of pronouns like Xe and Xem have been proposed, and could find popular use as
gender neutral pronouns in time. As of now no easy solution exists to facilitate easy inclusive
language, but with diligence Im sure we could all make efforts to lessen our own gender biases.
Awareness is the first step to change, and with a growing culture of tolerance and social courtesy
Im sure that people will be more conscious of how they word things, and in time adopt gender
inclusive terminology as the norm.

Bibliography
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