Reclaiming Women’s Perspective: Feminist Anthropology and the Androcentric Bias

Abstract

The past few decades have been marked by an increasing discussion on the role of dialogue in anthropology, especially following the anthropological turn of the 80s, when the discipline was looked upon as one “writing a culture” rather than understanding it from the insider’s perspective, while the ethnographer was thought of as the epistemic dictator, incapable of establishing a dialogical relation with his subjects of inquiry. The power relationship was indeed one of the most prominent problems in creating an equal, dialogical setting between the anthropologist and the other culture. This paper aims at revisiting feminist anthropology tracing the elements which constituted it, its original inspiration, and main motifs of action mostly gathered around the strong male bias of the discipline. This bias was predominantly manifested in the monological, androcentric understanding and exploration of cultures. In tracing these aspects, and acknowledging the more egalitarian status of this discipline since its early days versus other social sciences (Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict were among the most prominent women anthropologists), the paper will look at early women anthropologists works some of which were excluded from the canon. It will also point to the existence of strong male bias in ethnography and the discipline as a whole, thus triggering the emergence of feminist anthropology with its capacity for reflexivity and accountability in ethnographic work.