Androcentrism is the evaluation of individuals and cultures based on male perspectives, standards, and values. The term refers to a male-centered worldview which does not necessarily present explicitly negative views of women and girls, but positions men and boys as representative of the human condition or experience and women and girls as diverging from the human condition. It is a complex, subtle, and often unacknowledged form of sexism, existing on a continuum which includes misogyny and patriarchal attitudes, but it is also informed by patriarchal cultures in which men are granted more power and influence, and thus the right to evaluate and interpret individuals and cultures. Androcentrism exists in all fields of study and cultural expressions, including the arts, sciences, medicine, law, fine arts, and media (Hibbs, 2020).
Published in Chapter:
Overcoming Barriers
Copyright: © 2021
|Pages: 53
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-3763-3.ch004
Abstract
After a childhood of limited educational opportunities, lack of proportional representation, along with social stigmas in addition to the institutional barriers, Latinas and Hispanic women who overcame them all to acquire a professional degree still have to deal with the lack of recruitment, retention, and opportunities for promotion in employment within higher educational institutions. Because of the reality of skin color, heavy accent, and the historical White male middle class, institutions throughout the social system have created barriers for Hispanic women/Latinas, barriers that continue to prevent them from holding a full-time or attaining a tenured position in academe. The following sections will describe each of the barriers that impede Hispanic women in their advancement in educational institutions. The author will address how an invisible barrier, or glass ceiling, concrete ceiling or concrete wall, labyrinth, sticky floor, gated community, female androgynous behavior, and Jezebel stereotypes prevent women from achieving leadership positions in the academic profession—although a few do make it. For those who do become leaders, the questions become, “How did they do it?” “What barriers did they overcome and what supports enabled them to succeed?”