Feminist ethics aims to understand, criticize, and correct oppressive views of gender that harm women. One focus is an "ethic of care" where caring for others is valued. Care involves meeting needs through caring about, taking care of, care-giving, and care-receiving. An ethic of care questions how care work is distributed and valued. It could promote better citizenship if we start from the perspective of those needing care. However, an ethic of care may face challenges like appearing parochial, reinforcing binaries, or enabling paternalism.

1. Feminist ethic of care

2. Some key texts in the history of feminist ethics
Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest
(1694) defends women’s access to education.
As does Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
The term ‘feminism’ was coined in the 19th century (perhaps by Charles Fourier, French
social critic)
The Subjection of Women (1869) by John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill defends equal
rights for women on utilitarian grounds
Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) distinguishes a human female from a woman.
One may be born a human female, defined in terms of physiology and anatomy, but a
woman is socially constructed by men as the Other

3. Aristotle’s views of women
Aristotle: ‘the male rules over the female … although the parts of the soul are present in
all of them, they are present in different degrees (Politics, 1260a)
‘[I]nasmuch as every family is a part of a state … women and children must be trained by
education with an eye to the constitution’ (Politics, 1260b)
For Aristotle, the difference in the soul of a male and a female is that the female is not in
control of the element of deliberation
For Aristotle, women may be able to discern how to be moral in a given context, but, as
more subject to bodily functions, are not as able to impose the result of this deliberation
on themselves (or on others)
Consequently, rule over the city belongs to the man

4. de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and ‘otherness’
‘A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex’
‘[M]an represents both the positive and the neutral … whereas woman represents only the
negative, defined by limiting criteria’
‘[M]an … thinks of his body as a direct and normal connection with the world, which he
believes he apprehends objectively, whereas he regards the body of woman as a hindrance,
a prison, weighed down by everything peculiar to it’
‘Woman … is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference
to her … he is the subject … she is the Other’
In particular, a woman ‘is the Other in a totality of which the two components are
necessary to one another’
Males’ sexual desire and desire for children leaves them dependent on females - dependent
in virtue of the very things that man regards as the basis of a woman’s otherness
If the opportunities of women are limited as a result of being regarded as Other, women
are oppressed

5. What is feminist ethics?
Feminist ethics aims ‘to understand, criticise and correct:
The binary view of gender
The privilege historically available to men, and/or
The ways that views about gender maintain oppressive social orders or practices
that harm others, especially girls and women’
(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
A feminist ethicist is concerned with at least one of the above (and perhaps all three)

6. The concept of care
One definition of care (by Fischer and Tronto):
‘everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live
in it as well as possible’

7. Four phases of care (Tronto)
[1] Caring about
Noting that a need exists and should be met
[2] Taking care of
Recognising that one can act to address the need
[3] Care-giving
Directly meeting the need
[4] Care-receiving
Attending to the recipient’s concerns about the process of care-giving

8. Moral perception (Blum)
[1] Caring about
How we act in a situation depends on how we view it
E.g. I am on the Gautrain. What might I perceive:
An elderly person standing holding a shopping bag
An elderly person uncomfortable standing, because of holding a shopping bag
A sympathetic person is more likely to perceive a situation as involving a person’s good
(as well as to respond to it)
An adequate moral theory must deal not only with action but also with perception

9. The ethic of care debate
The ethic of care is animated by a vision of a world where the daily caring of people for
each other is a valued premise of human existence
Caring requires that one start from the standpoint of the one needing care or attention
Questions of gender are important to this vision because:
[1] care work is distributed by gender (and by class & race)
[2] the devaluing of women can occur by means of a devaluing of care

10. The neglect of care
Paradox: Care takes up a large part of our lives. But we do not pay systematic attention to
it. Why?
1. Because its recognition would undermine the legitimacy of existing inequalities of power
from which care-givers are by and large excluded
2. Because to need care is to be perceived to be weak/not to be autonomous
3. Because the rage that infants feel at being powerless over care-giver is transformed into
disgust with those who provide care

11. Tronto on care as a political ideal
Dependence on others sometimes thought to preclude citizenship - need to reject this
Equality is in one sense a political goal, not a given fact
Care can serve as a tool for critical political analysis, as a measure of unequal power
relations
It requires us to rethink public/private sphere distinction
If we become adept at caring, we would also have become better citizens, e.g. more
attentive to the plight of groups in society

12. Potential challenges for an ethic of care
Parochialism
How people are to look beyond their own local context of concerns around care
Binaries
Those who received detached care may be seen as marked out by their need for care
Paternalism
Care-givers (or those in charge of resources) may privilege their own view of how care is
to be given
… Maybe democratic structures can help individuals use information from other positions.
A fairer distribution of care needs would also provide more time for critical reflection