LESSON 9:
ETHICS OF CARE
Today, we will discuss about the ethics of care.
Points to be covered in this lesson:
• Concept of ethics of care
• Male and female ethical perspectives
Do Women and Men Think Differently about Ethics?
• Traditional assumption about male female difference
•
Stereotypes
• Men are rational
• Women are emotional
• A cause — or justification — or imposition
• Women are inferior
• Aristotle
•
Can obey reason: suited to be followers
•
But can’t formulate original reasons: not
suited to be leaders
• Kant
• Women “lack civil personality”
•
They’re biologically mentally unsuited to take part in
public life
• A woman’s place, rather, is in the home
•
Rousseau
•
Said men and women are different, but neither is
superior
• Nevertheless the differences
• Make men most suited to take part in public affairs
• And suit women more to private and domestic
concerns
• Initial feminist reaction: They deny such differences
altogether
• More recent tendency:
• They acknowledge that there are differences
• But they insist nevertheless that women are by no means
inferior and men superior
• Women are perfectly well suited to take part in
public affairs
•
They know how to exercise command and authority
What Could Account for Such a Difference Between the
Sexes?
Difference is socialization of boys and girls
• Women are socialized for more for home and hearth
•
Men are socialized more for impersonal cooperation
and competition in the public arena
Resulting psychological difference: “women are more attracted
than men to the values of the nuclear family.”
Psychologists Carol Gilligan and Lawrence Kohlberg (and
Freud, much earlier) discovered some evidence that males and
females reason differently when confronted with moral
problems. Their results are as follows:
Female Ethical Perspectives
Personal
Partial
Private
Natural
Feeling
Compassionate
Concrete
Responsibility
Relationship
Solidarity
Male Ethical Perspectives
Impersonal
Impartial
Public
Contractual
Reason
Fair
Universal
Rights
Individu