• Definition of Feminism:
• A commitment to ending the subordination/domination/oppression of women
  • Is the subordination ongoing? What counts as subordination?
    
    
• Are there psychological (not physical) differences between men and women?
• Do men and women think differently?


• Yes answer usually been used to subjugate women to men
• Aristotle: Women not as rational as men, so naturally ruled by men
• Kant: Women lack civil personality and should have no voice in public life
• Rousseau: They possess different virtues, neither better than the others; but it turns out that men's virtues fit them for leadership and women's for home and hearth.


• Feminism's answer to question of whether men and women think differently:
  • No unified answer to question of possible psychological differences between women
  • Feminist disagree among themselves


• Women's movement of 60's and 70's rejected psychological differences
• Supposed difference a mere stereotype: Men rational, women emotional
• If see such differences, this is only because women have been conditioned by an oppressive system to behave in "feminine" ways.
  
  
• Recent feminist thinkers suggested women/men do think differently
• And women's typical way of thinking is not inferior, but in some ways better
• Nancy Chodorow table of differences
• Female style of thinking has insights missed in more male-dominated areas.
• By attending to distinctive female approach, new insights can be gained and progress made in areas that were stalled
• Ethics is good example (feminist ethics)



• Feminist Ethics Chart

• Famous Harvard education psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg has a scale of moral development that suggests women are less morally developed than men
• The scale put a focus on relationships and keeping loyalty and trust with people (typical of women) on a lower level than the typical male approach of appealing to universal ethical principles



• Heinz drug stealing story to show how girls and boys think differently and girls end up lower on this scale (161-163)
• Jake thinks like typical male, conflict life/property solved by logic
• An ethic of principle
• Male way of thinking abstracts away from details that give each situation its special flavor
• Men's moral theories: impersonal duty, contracts, harmonization of competing interests, and calculation of costs and benefits.
• Amy responds in a typically female fashion to personal aspects of situation
• Ethic of caring
• Intimacy, caring, and personal relationships
• Women don't like to abstract away from detail of situation
• Basic moral orientation is caring for others, taking care of others in a personal way, not general concern for all humanity
• Sensitivity to the needs of others
• Include the points of view of the other in one's deliberation
• Amy couldn't just reject the druggist's point of view
• Overriding concern with relationship and responsibility



• Feminist ethics argues for a feminist point of view in ethics and rejects idea of an ethic of care is lower
• Caring, empathy, feeling with others, being sensitive to each other's feelings, may all be better guides to what morality requires in actual contexts than applying abstract rules of reason, rational calculation
• At least they are necessary components of an adequate morality



• Rachels view: The two sexes don't inhabit different moral universes
• Even if do think differently about ethics, difference can't be very great, rather difference in emphasis
• Also some men prefer caring perspective and some women prefer an ethic of principle
• Still, it could be that in general, women tend to the former and men the latter.



• How account for this general difference between men and women (if there is such)?
• Nurture: Women think differently because of social role to which assigned.
• Been assigned to home and hearth
• Values of care could be part of this psychological conditioning
• Nature: Since women are child-bearers, women's nature as mothers makes them natural care-givers
• The come equipped by nature with required (care giving) skills



• Evolutionary Psychology: Major features of human psychological life are products of natural selection
• Moth evolution story
• Have these features (emotions and behavioral tendencies) as allowed ancestors to survive and reproduce in past
• Darwin's struggle for existence: get as many copies of one's genes as possible in next generation
• Men can father hundreds of children, women only one baby each nine months
• Men reproductive strategy to impregnate as many females as possible, investing only as much energy as necessary to insure offspring survives
• Women invest heavily in each child and choose males partners who will stay around and make similar investment
• Explains why men more promiscuous than women
• Explains why women are more attracted than men to values of nuclear family
• Perhaps explains the care ethics of women

Implications of ethics of care as opposed to ethics of principle for three issues:

• Family and Friends
• Ethic of duty/principle ill-suited to life among family and friends: acting only out of duty toward them leads to being a bad friend or parent
• Strict impartiality doesn't work with family and friends and it is antagonistic to values of love and friendship
• Ethic of care doesn't take obligation as fundamental nor does it require impartiality promote interests of everyone.
• Moral life a network of relationships with specific other people, and involves caring for them
• Ethic of care confirms the priority we give to our family and friends.


• Helping disadvantaged children
• Suggests that ethics of principle (e.g., utilitarianism and Kantiansim) requires this and ethic of care based on close personal relations says we don't have to help
• Rachels criticizes exclusive concern with personal relations
• Making personal relationships the whole of ethics seems as wrong-headed as ignoring them altogether
• Ethical life includes both caring personal relations and benevolent concern for people generally
• Ethics of care should be a supplement to, rather than replacement of traditional moral theories.


• Animals
• Feminist ethics:
• Appeals to feeling and intuition, rather than principle
• Involves an individual relationship between one who cares and one who is cared for
• The cared for must be able to participate in the relationship and respond
• We do have such a relation with pets, and so have obligations to them
• No such feelings or relations to cows and so no obligation to them, (says Nel Noddings a feminist ethicist)


• Rachels response: If there is a role for principles, then even cows get in the moral arena

Transition to virtue ethics