Chapter Ten:
Gender and Ethics
The female perspective of moral issues has
been ignored in favor of a male perspective
Female Genital Mutilation Example
Alison Jaggar: Five Harms with
the Male Bias in Ethics
Relegates to women subservient
obligations (obedience, silence, and
faithfulness)
Confines women to a socially isolated
domestic realm of society with little
legitimate political regulation
Denies the moral agency of women,
claiming they lack the capacity for moral
reasoning
Alison Jaggar: Five Harms with
the Male Bias in Ethics
Preference for masculine values over
female ones (e.g., independence,
autonomy, intellect vs. interdependence,
community, connection, sharing, emotion)
Prefers male notions of moral rules,
judgments about particular actions,
impartial moral assessments, contractual
agreements.
Two Key Questions
How do men and women psychologically
differ from each other (if at all)?
Based on those psychological differences,
how do men and women differ from each
other (if at all)?
Classic Views
Aristotle: Women and Natural
Subservience
Rousseau: Women as Objects of Sexual
Desire
Wollstonecraft: Gender-Neutral Morality
Instinct vs. Social Construction
Aristotle: Women and Natural
Subservience
Psychological question: men are designed
to command, and women to obey
Different capacities of the soul
Slave: no deliberative faculty at all
Women: the deliberative faculty without
authority
Child: an immature deliberative faculty
Aristotle: Women and Natural
Subservience
Moral question: women have subservient
virtues
Different virtues for different capacities of
the soul
Man: temperance and courage in
commanding
Women: temperance and courage in
obeying
Aristotle: Women and Natural
Subservience
Criticism: based on the roles of women in
ancient patriarchal societies
Rousseau: Women as Objects
of Sexual Desire
Psychological question: women are
designed to sexually please men
“It is his strength that attracts her to him,
and it is her allurement that attracts him
to her.”
Rousseau: Women as Objects
of Sexual Desire
Moral question: women should learn to
entice men
He depends on her cooperation to satisfy
his sexual desires, and she submits to
his superior strength when she gets
what she wants from him
Wollstonecraft: Gender-Neutral
Morality
Psychological question: men and women
are fundamentally the same
The apparent differences are the result of
sexist education
Wollstonecraft: Gender-Neutral
Morality
Moral question:
Three features of personhood(what
separates humans from animals):
reason, the exercise of virtue, and the
passion for knowledge
Wollstonecraft: Gender-Neutral
Morality
Moral question:
All moral duties are human duties and
there are no special female virtues or
obligations
• Child rearing: women are not
necessarily good at it
• No special moral obligation to be
subservient and sexually alluring
Instinct vs. Social Construction
Criticism of Wollstonecraft: her basis for
denying psychological gender differences
was based on her own experience as a
woman
Instinct vs. Social Construction
Nature-nurture issue regarding
psychological gender differences
Today we are still unclear, and
unsubstantiated stereotypes still abound
Toy study with rhesus monkeys: boys
preferred wheeled toys over dolls, girls
preferred both
Instinct vs. Social Construction
Best to postpone answering the naturenurture question for now
But some psychological differences are so
strong that they may form foundations for
gender differences in ethics
Female Care Ethics
Kohlberg and Gilligan: Justice vs. Care
Care and Particularism
Care and Virtues
Kohlberg and Gilligan: Justice vs.
Care
Kohlberg's theory
Six stages of moral development, which
move from selfishness to impartial
justice
Kohlberg and Gilligan: Justice vs.
Care
Gilligan's theory
Criticism of Kohlberg: his study used only
males, and his justice view of morality
was male-oriented
Kohlberg and Gilligan: Justice vs.
Care
Gilligan's theory
A woman's moral point of view is different
from a man's
• Men typically emphasize rights and
principles of justice
• Women typically focus on particular
relationships
Kohlberg and Gilligan: Justice vs.
Care
Gilligan's theory
Care-ethics: attitudes like caring and
sensitivity to context is an important
aspect of the moral life
Care and Particularism
Moral particularism: morality always
involves particular relations with people,
not lifeless abstractions
Classical moral theory incorporates some
particularism by recognizing obligations to
family, friends, and local community
Care and Particularism
Criticism: this is not a dominant feature of
traditional ethics, and it may not go far
enough
Care and Virtues
Nel Noddings: Care should be seen as a
component of virtue theory, where care is
a nurturing character trait that we
personally internalize, as we do other
virtues
Four options regarding gender and
ethics
Male-Only Option
Female-Only Option
Separate-but-Equal Option
Mutually-Inclusive Option
