The article is devoted to the consideration of the methods used by feminist theory for a critical study of androcentric theories of society. Despite the existence of many examples of criticism of the society theories, revealing their androcentric conditionality, no attempt has been made to analyze the methodology used in them with the potential of its capabilities to identify the androcentric component of these theories. The article compares the possibilities of different directions of feminist theory (liberal, radical, Marxist and socialist, postmodern) to detect and criticize androcentrism in order to identify key aspects of this criticism. As a result of the study, it is concluded that criticism of androcentrism involves reliance on a value and theoretical foundation that is different from that of the criticized theory. It requires that the critic has his own vision of society, suggesting that the position of women, who make up one half of it, is significant for the functioning of society as such. Moreover, relying on the categories of female and male experience allows us to reveal the false universality of statements which in reality reflect only male experience and appear completely different when we try to localize them in the female one. The revealed features of criticism of androcentrism indicate the need for its implementation of the foundation in the form of critical theory of society based on the categories of women and men and not accepting claims which pretend to gender neutrality without preliminary critical research.