Anthropology, the study of man and occasionally woman

The paradigm of the ideal and real model that anthropologists apply cross-culturally can be used to analyze the discipline itself. The ideal model of anthropology is one which is non-ethnocentric, comparative and, by implication, free of gender bias. The reality of anthropological study reflects an androcentrism which is observed in the treatment of female anthropologists by the discipline, in the collection of anthropological data, and in the analysis of ethnographic material. A feminist approach in the research setting and the classroom enables anthropologists and anthropology to overcome this inherent inconsistency in traditional anthropological thought and to approximate more closely the ideal model of anthropology.