Gender Rethinking the History of Ethical Theory Womens voices have been excluded from the canon Autonomous man an ethics of strangers odd from a feminist perspective Social contract theory ID: 600231
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Slide1
Ch 10: The Ethics of Diversity:
GenderSlide2
Rethinking the History of Ethical Theory
Women’s voices have been
excluded
from the canon.
Autonomous man
– an ethics of strangers, odd from a feminist perspective.
Social contract theory
– disadvantages women, glue of society is not contract but family
Impartiality and Universality
– invalidates moral priority of intimate relationships
Absence of embodiment
– res
cogitans
not embodied beingsSlide3
Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development
Preconventional
moralit
y: early childhood:
Stage One
: desire to avoid punishment
Stage Two
: Tit for tat
Conventional moral
ity: adolescence and adulthood
Stage three
: Good boy/ nice girl orientation
Stage four
: Rule following
Post conventional morality
: rarely reached
Stage five
: social construct orientation
Stage six
: universal justice, reciprocity, equality and respectSlide4
The Ethics of Care
Carol Gilligan – began research on moral development with draft resisters then shifted to female subjects on the subject of abortion when the draft ended in 1973.
Metaphor of voice – instead of theory or perspective.
Women’s voices didn’t fit Kohlberg’s stages: care rather than justice
Women emerge as more concerned about relationships, emotional connectedness and caregiving. Voice varies internally regarding masculine and feminine approaches to morality, as well as between the genders.Slide5
Rethinking the Foundations of Ethics
Ethics as conversation: conversation not argument.
Inclusive conversation: women and people of color need to be involved.
New issues emerge: domestic violence, child abuse, family leave, responsibilities toward elderly parents.
Caution against using morality to justify violence: honor, domestic violence, suppression.Slide6
Caring and Act Utilitarianism
Both are consequentialist and address pleasures and pains.
Care ethic calculates differently:
Extent to which people might be hurt by a particular decision
Degree to which a particular decision might diminish the sense of connectedness among participants of the situation.
Emotions more important.Slide7
Feminine and Feminist Ethics
Feminine ethics: emphasize women’s moral voices, often an ethics of care, following Gilligan.
Feminist ethics
focusses
on women’s oppression and argues for policies to rectify past injustices.
Power and inequality stressed.
C
onditions for feminist ethics from Alison
Jagger
:
Sensitive to gender inequalities
Understand individual actions in the context of broader social practices.
Provide guidance on issues traditionally seen as private, e.g., personal relationships and family.
Take the moral experience of women seriouslySlide8
Public and Private Realms
Feminist ethics emphasizes moral scrutiny in the private realm generally confined to women, children persons or color and persons with disabilities.
Family issues – equal treatment of men and women at home, in workplace.
Power issues: patriarchy, rape, reproductive freedom, sexism in language, harassment, pornography, poverty.Slide9
Queer and Transgender Theories
Reconsider the notion of gender identity and sexual orientation and domination entailed.
Reconsider “the natural.”
Reconsider dichotomous thinking: male/female
Emergence of transgender theory.