Androcentrism: The Ascendancy Of Man

by Charles A Pasternak (Author)

Since time immemorial, men have assumed superior innate qualities which have justified them in exerting power over the other sex right up to the twentieth century. The last few years have seen the emergence of a new literary genre: to show that despite this, women have managed to become outstanding writers, artists, scientists, explorers, rulers and politicians. Of such books, none discusses a fundamental question: is the supposed male superiority biological, or has it arisen for some other reason over the course of time? This is the issue that Androcentrism: The Ascendancy of Man addresses. The stronger physique of males may have given Palaeolithic man a feeling of superiority, but the two sexes probably lived in fairly gender-neutral, or even matriarchal, groups right up to the end of the Neolithic Age. Charles Pasternak argues that it was the emergence of hierarchies, like chiefdom, that largely sparked androcentrism. It became established as villages grew into towns, with the ownership of property as an important ingredient, during the Bronze Age. While the Mediaeval Period was a time of slight respite for women, the Age of Enlightenment in Europe did not bolster this trend; it reversed it. Not until the latter half of the nineteenth century was androcentrism beginning to be seriously questioned, but significant change happened only after World War I. Today androcentrism has virtually disappeared from most parts of the world. It was just a cultural blip, albeit one that lasted over 5,000 years.

Professor Charles Pasternak is a British biochemist and founding Director of the Oxford International Biomedical Centre, of which he is currently President. He has published over 250 original papers and reviews, and is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Bioscience Reports, helming the journal for 28 years. He is also the editor of Biosciences 2000 (World Scientific, 1999), and author of seven other books.

Educated at Oxford University, Charles Pasternak spent 15 years on the staff of the Oxford Biochemistry Department, during which time he also held a teaching Fellowship at Worcester College, Oxford. He spent two years as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Pharmacology Department of Yale University Medical School, and subsequently held an Eleanor Roosevelt Fellowship of the International Union Against Cancer in the Department of Neurosciences at the University of California San Diego Medical School in La Jolla. In 1976 he was invited to move to St. George's Hospital Medical School, University of London, in order to set up a new Department of Biochemistry, which he subsequently expanded into a larger Department of Cellular and Molecular Sciences as founder-Chairman. He is currently President of the Oxford International Biomedical Centre which he founded in 1992.

Charles Pasternak is a tireless promoter of international scientific collaboration. He has been a member of the Executive Committee for a UNESCO initiative on Molecular and Cellular Biology, a member of the Education Committee of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB), a member of the International Advisory Board for the Chulabhorn Research Institute, Bangkok and a member of the Scientific Board of Antenna Technologie, Geneva. In 1979 he founded the Cell Surface Research Fund in order to foster international research links and scientific meetings on various aspects of fundamental and clinical research on the cell surface. In 1993 he received the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa and Palade medal from the University of Bucharest, in 1995 the honour of Amigo de Venezuela from the Fundacion Venezuela Positiva, and in 2002 was elected Foreign Member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences.