The document discusses different perspectives on gender and ethics. It describes Alison Jaggar's view that traditional ethics has been biased towards a male perspective by relegating women to subservient roles and preferring masculine values. It also outlines classic views from Aristotle, Rousseau, and Wollstonecraft on gender differences and women's roles. The nature versus nurture debate on gender differences is discussed. More recently, some ethicists have focused on an ethics of care that emphasizes relationships and responsibility.

1. Chapter Ten:
Gender and Ethics
The female perspective of moral issues has
been ignored in favor of a male perspective
Female Genital Mutilation Example

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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)?

5. Classic Views
 Aristotle: Women and Natural
Subservience
 Rousseau: Women as Objects of Sexual
Desire
 Wollstonecraft: Gender-Neutral Morality
 Instinct vs. Social Construction

6. 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

7. 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

8. Aristotle: Women and Natural
Subservience
 Criticism: based on the roles of women in
ancient patriarchal societies

9. 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.”

10. 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

11. Wollstonecraft: Gender-Neutral
Morality
 Psychological question: men and women
are fundamentally the same
The apparent differences are the result of
sexist education

12. 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

13. 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

14. Instinct vs. Social Construction
 Criticism of Wollstonecraft: her basis for
denying psychological gender differences
was based on her own experience as a
woman

15. 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

16. Instinct vs. Social Construction
 Best to postpone answering the nature-
nurture question for now
 But some psychological differences are
so strong that they may form foundations
for gender differences in ethics

17. Female Care Ethics
 Kohlberg and Gilligan: Justice vs. Care
 Care and Particularism
 Care and Virtues

18. Kohlberg and Gilligan: Justice vs.
Care
 Kohlberg's theory
Six stages of moral development, which
move from selfishness to impartial
justice

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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

23. Care and Particularism
 Criticism: this is not a dominant feature of
traditional ethics, and it may not go far
enough

24. 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

25. Four options regarding gender and
ethics
 Male-Only Option
 Female-Only Option
 Separate-but-Equal Option
 Mutually-Inclusive Option