FEMINISM & FEMINIST

ETHICS

Ethics of Care or Care Ethics

 Introduction
 Feminism is grounded on the belief that women are oppressed or
disadvantaged by comparison with men, and that their oppression is in some
way illegitimate or unjustified.
 A feminist is one who is concerned about the well-being of women, while
being critical of the unequal treatment and violence that afflict women.
 Feminist philosophers Sally Haslanger, Nancy Tuana, and Peg O’Connor
define feminism as, “an intellectual commitment and a political movement
that seeks justice for women and the end of sexism [prejudice on the basis of
sex] in all forms.”
 Although throughout the history of philosophy writers challenged the sexual
stereotype and offer different pictures of women, it was only at the end of the
eighteenth century did a stream of philosophical arguments aimed at the
emancipation of women begin to gather force.
 Introduction
 At the end of the nineteenth century the term la féminisme appeared in France, and rapidly
taken up in the rest of Europe and then in America.
 The label ‘feminist’ thus arose out of the sequence of diverse campaigns for female
emancipation fought throughout the nineteenth century - campaigns for the vote, for
access to education and the professions, for the right of married women to own property
and have custody of their children, for the abolition of laws about female prostitution.
 Many of the most influential philosophical defences of women’s emancipation dating
from this period were in fact written by people involved in political work.
 One was John Stuart Mill, the author of The Subjection of Women, who proposed to the
British parliament in 1867 an amendment to the Reform Bill designed to give votes to
women; the other was Emily Davies, author of The Higher Education of Women, was the
foundress of Girton College, Cambridge, the first women’s college of higher education in
England.
 Waves of Feminism
 The history of the feminist movements is divided into three "waves".
 First-wave feminism involved a period of feminist activity during the 19th and
early 20th centuries, especially in Europe and in the United States. Key concerns:
(a) women's suffrage (the right to vote),
(b) the right to education,
(c) better working conditions,
(d) marriage and property laws,
(e) reproductive rights
 Second-wave feminism is a period of feminist activity and thought that first
began in the early 1960s in USA and spread all over the western world and
beyond.
 The practical emphasis of second wave feminism was social reform.
 Waves of Feminism
Key concerns of second wave feminism:
(a) raising consciousness about sexism and patriarchy,
(b) raising consciousness about gender based violence, domestic abuse and marital rape
(c) inequalities in the workplace,
(d) legalizing abortion and birth control,
(e) sexual liberation of women
 The third wave of feminism (1990s - present) arose partially as a response to the
perceived failures of second-wave feminism. Reform can’t be accomplished solely by
opposing all that is wrong; alternatives must also be made available.
 Further, social reform usually requires more than changes in law and even social
practices.
 Thus, most feminists now think that reform requires human change as well: changes
in how we think and how we perceive both the world and ourselves.
 Waves of Feminism
Third wave feminism focuses primarily upon our understandings of personal identity
and gender. This latest wave includes concerns for other marginalized groups within our
society and across the globe as well as with environmental issues and the larger issues of
social justice.

Key concerns of third wave feminism:

(a) Intersectionality, an acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique experiences
of discrimination and oppression and we must consider everything and anything that can
marginalize people – gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, etc.
(b) The diversity of "women" is recognized and emphasis is placed on identity, gender,
race, nation, social order and sexual preference,
(c) Changes on stereotypes, media portrayals and language used to define women.
(d) Sexual identities
(e) Emphasis on caring rather than on justice - caring is both prior and theoretically
superior to justice. This gives rise to a new ethical theory, ethics of care or care ethics.
Feminism’s Two important thinkers: Mary Wollstonecraft and Simone de
Beauvoir

 The history of feminism includes both those who are primarily concerned with
promoting women’s equality with men, as well as those who wanted to raise the
value of women’s unique characteristics. The most well-known writers and
activists of this movement have been those who have stressed women’s rights
and equality.
 Among the earliest examples is Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote in A
Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) that women were not by nature weak
and emotional, but that their social situation had in many ways made them so.
 She insisted that it was society that taught women negative moral traits such as
cunning and vanity.
 Women should have rights to employment, legal rights within the family, a right
to free speech and a separate assembly in which they could represent themselves
 Mary Wollstonecraft
 Wollstonecraft argued that the education and emancipation of women are
conditions of a truly civilized society.
 God has endowed all humans with reason so that they can use it to govern their
passions and attain knowledge and virtue. To deprive women of the opportunity to
perfect their nature and increase their capacity for happiness is to treat them as
less than human and render them ‘gentle, domestic brutes’.
 Far from being natural, Wollstonecraft explains, the presumed inferiority of
women stems primarily from their lack of education.
 Cut off from learning and encouraged to care only for love and fashion, they are
unable to cultivate any solid virtues, and do indeed display the flightiness
(PcjgwZ, Aw¯’iZv) and stupidity for which they are criticized.
 Mary Wollstonecraft
 In addition to damaging themselves, women in this condition diminish others.
 First, they damage men. To treat a fellow human despotically shows a lack of virtue, and just
as kings are corrupted by their excessive power, so men are corrupted by the tyranny they
exercise over their sisters, daughters and wives.
 Second, ignorant and powerless women are unfitted to instil virtue into their children. ‘To be
a good mother - a woman must have sense and that independence of mind which few
women possess who are taught to depend entirely on their husbands.’
 The aim of educating women is, in her view, to make them into virtuous wives and mothers
who, by fulfilling these natural duties, will become useful members of society.
 Freed from male subjection, educated women would not usurp the roles of men but would
freely and virtuously pursue their domestic lives to the benefit of society as a whole.
 Men and women are intellectual equals but there are natural differences between them which
fit them for distinct ways of life: rational women will see that their place is in the home.
 Simone de Beauvoir
 Simone de Beauvoir’s work The Second Sex (1949) became a classic text for what has
been called a “second wave” of feminists (the “first wave” being the nineteenth-century
women’s rights advocates).
 All through history, Beauvoir argues, woman has been denied full humanity, denied the
human right to create, to invent, to go beyond mere living to find a meaning for life in
projects of ever-widening scope.
 Man ‘remodels the face of the earth, he creates new instruments, he invents, he shapes the
future’; woman, on the other hand, is always and archetypally Other. She is seen by and
for men, always the object and never the subject.
 According to de Beauvoir, women are a “second sex” because they are regarded always in
terms of being an “other” to the primary male sex.
 She stressed the need for women to be independent selves and free to establish their own
goals and projects.
 Simone de Beauvoir
 Her central argument is: it is male activity that in creating values has made of
existence itself a value; this activity has prevailed over the confused forces of life;
‘it has subdued Nature and Woman’.
 Woman, she argues, has come to stand for Nature, Mystery, the non-human; what
she represents is more important than what she is, what she herself experiences.
 Beauvoir’s central question is: What is Woman?
 Her answer: ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’; and she can
change her condition. Becoming a woman is a cultural and historical process
which is never completed.
 Although Beauvoir allows that there will always be differences between women
and men deriving from their bodily distinctions and the effect these have on their
sensuality, there is no one thing that women intrinsically or naturally are.
Correspondingly, there is no discernible limit to what they may become.
 Simone de Beauvoir
 Most women, mistakenly, look for salvation in love. But Beauvoir’s own alternative is an
image of the ‘the independent woman’ who “wants to be active, a taker, and refuses the
passivity man means to impose on her.
 The modern woman accepts masculine values; she prides herself on thinking, taking
action, working, creating on the same terms as man.”
 Beauvoir adds that too many women cling to the privileges of femininity; while too many
men are comfortable with the limitations it imposes on women.
 Today, women are torn between the past and a possible, but difficult and as yet
unexplored, future.
 Beauvoir was always opposed to any feminism that championed women’s special virtues
or values, firmly rejecting any idealization of specifically ‘feminine’ traits. To support that
kind of feminism, she argued, would imply agreement with “a myth invented by men to
confine women to their oppressed state. For women it is not a question of asserting
themselves as women, but of becoming full-scale human beings.”
 Feminist Ethics: Ethics of Care
 Concerns about the condition and roles of women, both morally and socially, have a
long history. Their impact upon ethics, however, has grown considerably since about
the middle of the twentieth century, paralleling the development of feminist thought
over the same period.
 At present, feminist ethics is exploring a very large range of topics, and there has been
a great proliferation of viewpoints. Although this makes feminist ethics impossible to
summarize, it is at least possible to identify several of its defining themes.
 (i) The importance of women’s experience: The distinctive values, perspectives, and
practices of women need to be studied and appraised with great care.
 Historically, societies have assigned women roles that have kept them from
participating in the public world. Most “women’s work” thus has taken place in the
private world, often as some type of caregiving (e.g., for young children, the sick, and
the elderly).
 Feminist Ethics: Defining Themes
 (ii) The existence of gender bias: In several cases, the roles traditionally taken by
women have both originated in and preserved sexist presuppositions. More generally,
women, their work, their contributions, and their perspectives have been almost
universally undervalued or even completely ignored.
 Women have suffered injustices and been made subordinate because of the ways male-
dominated societies are structured, including even by widely accepted ethical systems.
 (iii) The need for moral reform: Nevertheless, the activities of women, especially in
the private world, have nurtured perspectives and values that bring important new or
neglected moral insights to light. These insights—especially having to do with caring
—can be profitably applied in the development of alternate ethical viewpoints and
theories, which has the ultimate goal of reforming the entire social system.
 Origin of Care Ethics
 The origins of care ethics can be found in one corner of feminism’s story just
preceding the third wave. In her groundbreaking 1982 book, In a Different
Voice, Carol Gilligan argued that there is a feminine moral perspective distinct
from the more familiar masculine perspective.
 Gilligan described the masculine perspective as the justice perspective, in
contrast to the feminine care perspective.
 According to Gilligan, these perspectives reflect fundamentally different ways
people think and talk about moral problems. She interviewed both male and
female subjects about various moral dilemmas and found that the females she
interviewed had a different view than the males of what was morally required
of them. They used a different moral language to explain themselves, and their
reasoning involved a different moral logic.
 Gilligan concluded that males and females have different kinds of ethics.
 Result of Carol Gillian’s Studies
 In Carol Gilligan’s studies, conducted in the 1970s, a hypothetical situation was posed
to two eleven year-old children, Jake and Amy.
 The Hypothetical situation: A man’s wife was extremely ill and in danger of dying. A certain drug might save her
life, but the man could not afford it, in part because the druggist had set an unreasonably high price for it. The
question was whether the man should steal the drug? Jake answered by trying to figure out the relative value of the
woman’s life and the druggist’s right to his property. He concluded that the man should steal the drug because he
calculated that the woman’s life was worth more. Amy was not so sure. She wondered what would happen to both
the man and his wife if he stole the drug. “If he stole the drug, he might save his wife then, but if he did, he might
have to go to jail, and then his wife might get sicker again.” She said that if the husband and wife talked about this
they might be able to think of some other way out of the dilemma.
 In this case the two children tried to determine the right thing to do in this situation in
very different ways. The boy used a calculation in which he weighed and compared
values from a neutral standpoint.
 The girl spoke about the possible effects of the proposed action on the two individuals
and their relationship. Her method did not give the kind of definitive answer that is
apparent in the boy’s method.
 Carol Gilligan’s Care Ethics
 Another example: In explaining how they would respond to a moral dilemma about maintaining one’s moral
principles in the light of peer or family pressure, two teen subjects responded quite differently. The case was one in
which the religious views of each teen differed from those of their parents. The male said that he had a right to his
own opinions, though he respected his parents’ views. The female said that she was concerned about how her parents
would react to her views. “I understand their fear of my new religious ideas.” However, she added, “they really ought
to listen to me and try to understand my beliefs.”
 Although the male and female subjects reached similar conclusions, they used
different reasoning. They seemed to have two decidedly different orientations or
perspectives.
 The male spoke in terms of an individual’s right to his own opinions, while the
female talked of the need for the particular people involved to talk with and come to
understand one another.
 These and similar cases are evidences that two different moral perspectives exist;
while men tend to take the justice perspective, women more often adopt the care
perspective. Attention to the care perspective has led to the ethics of care.
 The case for Care Ethics
 Traditional moral theories—especially utilitarianism and Kantian ethics— strongly
align with the justice perspective. This perspective has dominated our society for
several hundred years, so it’s no accident that our social institutions neglect moral
considerations associated with care.
 Recognizing this imbalance, care theorists have constructed a new ethics that takes
the distinctive moral perspective of care. Given that our society usually deals with
moral problems in terms of universal principles, rights, and justice, care theorists
offer a major alternative as their basis for social reform.
 Care ethics was developed based on the understanding of the individual as an
interdependent, relational being and emphasized the importance of human
relationships and emotion based virtues such as benevolence, mercy, care,
friendship, reconciliation, and sensitivity.
 Virginia Held’s Interpretation
 For Virginia Held, care theorists particularly reject the universalism, rationalism,
and individualism of traditional theories.
 Instead, they maintain that special responsibilities can arise within particular
relationships (particularism), that certain relation-building emotions are no less
important than reason, and that relationships rather than individuals are morally
central.
 (a) Universalism: Traditional principle-based ethics reflect universalism and its
reliance upon universal moral principles.
 Kant’s categorical imperative requires that any morally acceptable action falls
under a maxim that is rationally universalizable.
 The moral point of universalism is to combat self-centeredness—to encourage
impartiality. Universalism helps combat our thinking exclusively about ourselves.
 Rejection of universalism, reason and individualism

 Against traditional principle-based theories care theorists reject the assumption that morality can
be rigidly summarized by universal principles. For them, morality is too complex for any set of
rules to address all moral concerns.
 Care theorists are especially concerned about our moral responsibilities within relationships—
between friends, between parents and children, and between spouses—which have been largely
ignored by traditional theories.
 Besides, principles cannot lead us to think about relationships in the right sorts of ways. It’s
bizarre to speak of a mother’s duty to love and cuddle her newborn or of the husband’s duty to
lend a sympathetic ear to his wife’s story of her day.
 For all of these reasons, care theorists reject universalism, maintaining that the right act depends
on each distinct situation, including not only the personal character traits involved (virtue
theory) but also the relationships between the persons involved.
 This ethics looks at particular kinds of relationships (e.g., friendship, marriage, parent/child),
together with particular aspects of those relationships (e.g., a friendly acquaintance vs. a close
friendship; being the parent of a young child vs. an adult child).
 Primacy of emotion over reason
 (b) Emotion: Traditional theories (even virtue theory) view morality as inherently
rational. They thus have taken a dim view of emotion, which can run counter to the
dictates of reason.
 Yet while reason can certainly help us when our feelings clash with morality, the
rationalistic tradition has been mistaken, care ethicists maintain, in viewing emotions
exclusively as obstructing moral action.
 Hate, anger, and selfishness can indeed move us to do wrong, but “sensitivity,
sympathy, empathy and solidarity of feeling” can promote morally desirable attitudes.
 Care ethicists thus urge us not to reject interpersonal emotions wholesale but to
embrace the “moral” emotions as essential to morally healthy relationships.
 In fact, some care ethicists consider reason to be only a secondary determinant of
morality.
 Rejection of individualism
 Individualism: Traditional ethics is individualistic, i.e., is based on the
conception of persons as self-sufficient moral agents.
 Individualism lies at the heart of what we have called value-neutral autonomy, the
notion that autonomy is only about freedom from everything beyond our direct
personal control.
 Besides, individualism conceives of interpersonal relationships as essentially
contractual: as agreements freely entered into by autonomous individuals for the
sake of sharing certain interests and for mutual benefit.
 In stark contrast, care ethics emphasizes interdependence and connectedness,
basing morality upon relationships rather than individuals.
 As a relational ethic, care ethics sees us developing our personal characters,
moral responsibilities, and even our personal autonomy through our relationships.
 Foundation of an Ethics of Care
 Since the care perspective introduces assumptions and values quite different from
those of most other ethical theories, it has great potential for enriching our moral
understanding. Although there are several approaches to care theory any acceptable
care theory would agree with most of the following foundations.
 These themes are not ascribed to by all feminist ethicists. These themes are
discussed by Virginia Held in her The Ethics of Care, Personal, Political, and
Global (2007), and by Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and
Moral Education (1984).
 1. Caring Relationships: According to Nel Noddings, an important early care
theorist, our most fundamental moral obligation is to interact with other persons as
caring: “Whatever I do in life, whomever I meet, I am first and always one-caring
or one cared-for.”
 In this sense, caring can never involve just one person; it can only take place within
relationships.
 Caring Relationship
 Distinction between different kinds of relationships:
 Symmetrical relationships: symmetrical relationships involve relationships
between friends, co-workers, and spouses—each person depending upon the
other to roughly the same degree. Depending on the situation, either person
may act as the carer (the initiator of caring) or as the cared-for (its recipient),
although neither occupies either role predominantly.
 Asymmetrical relationships: In relationships between teachers and students,
doctors and patients, and parents and children, one mainly depends on the
other. In such asymmetrical relationships, the more dependent person
typically remains the cared-for, whereas the other acts as carer.
 Closeness: Relationships also vary in closeness. One of the closest human
relationships is that between a mother and her child—although relationships
between spouses, friends, or siblings can also be very close.
 Relationship and Mutuality
 Relationship involves responsibilities: Although the carer has the primary responsibilities
within a relationship, the cared-for also has certain responsibilities.
 Noddings maintained that the cared-for must complete the act initiated by the carer by
recognizing himself as the recipient of care and acknowledging that in a confirming way.
Thus, the infant responds to the mother’s caring with smiles and happy sounds, while
students may react to the teacher by showing interest, involvement, and cooperation.
 2. Mutuality: Caring relationships are to be modeled upon relationships that closely tie
people together. Being “tied” to another is captured by the concept of mutuality.
 Ideally, a caring relationship ties people to each other in several ways. First, both persons
value many of the same things (e.g., they value certain shared interests, each other, and the
relationship itself). Both must share their valuing of these things as part of what constitutes
their relationship.
 Mutuality
 Secondly, mutual valuing naturally leads to shared feelings in which they not only care
about the things they mutually value but also feel affection toward and care for each
other.
 This is where “moral” emotions like sensitivity and empathy become important.
Because such feelings tie the concerns and well-being of each to those of the other, a
hurt suffered by either is suffered by both.
 Thirdly, since it’s not possible to care about something without knowing something
about it, mutuality shares knowledge.
 Sharing an interest, for instance, requires that people know something about the subject
of their interest and share that knowledge.
 Furthermore, mutuality requires that each learn something about the other person’s
feelings, concerns, and needs.
 Thus, each should constantly strive to gain a better understanding of the other, for this is
how relationships deepen and grow.
 Transformation and Action
 3. Transformation: Caring relationships can profoundly affect the individuals
involved. Since caring begets caring, those involved grow as caring persons. It is
thus necessary that both individuals actively participate within a caring relationship
for caring to develop.
 More fundamentally, caring helps make us who we are as persons.
 4. Action: Genuine caring results in action, since action is needed to fulfill people’s
needs. While specific caring acts don’t all have to be aimed at specific needs, every
act of caring must contribute to fulfilling some sort of human need.
 The nature of those needs can vary; in addition to life-sustaining needs, for
instance, there are subtler psychological and emotional needs that we also all share.
 Meeting needs is essential to caring.
 Caring as normative
 Thus we see that care theory is an ethics and is therefore intended to be morally
normative.
 Care ethics has important things to say about aspects of relationships that can be
morally good or bad (values) as well as about what we should or should not do
(prescriptions).
 Care ethics first identifies an ideal caring relationship as the fundamental good; it
then proceeds to analyze those moral qualities that can contribute toward good
relationships.
 For example, we can describe good relationships in terms of values like being
respectful, trusting, open, and characterized by mutuality. Then there are
relationships that lack such qualities or, worse, that are “dominating, exploitative,
mistrustful, or hostile.” Whether good or bad, relational values can also be
extended to individuals.
 Caring as normative
 Indeed, those personal qualities that help promote caring relationships can be treated
much like “virtues.” For instance, the character traits of sensitivity, compassion, and
loyalty are morally desirable in individuals because they positively contribute to
relationships.
 Care ethics considers it an important moral responsibility for us to promote and
nurture caring in the relationships of others. This is best done by modeling genuine
caring within actual relationships.
 For the most part, caring cannot be taught through rules or motivated by rewards or
punishments. Instead, individuals can learn about caring by being shown deeply
caring relationships.
 They learn even more by actively participating in caring relationships, experiencing
for themselves the range of qualities that make up healthy caring relationships.
 It’s especially important that children experience deep and consistent caring, which
then enables them to initiate and develop caring relationships with others.
 Caring as normative
 Finally, care theory has moral implications for political, economic, and
even global issues.
 Although our interactions at these levels are usually both distant and
impersonal, we are still tied to each other by many shared interests and
concerns and can still act in ways that affect others.
 We thus can still have obligations for caring even at these levels. We can
help meet the needs of others by how we vote, invest our finances, or give
to alleviate poverty.
 We also have a moral responsibility to restructure schools, businesses, and
government programs so that these meet people’s needs in more caring
ways.
 Care and Virtue
 Care theory and virtue ethics have a great deal in common. Is ‘caring’ a virtue?
 Many virtue theorists think that care ethics is merely a variant of virtue theory,
maintaining that care ethics can be derived from virtue theory.
 But care ethics and virtue theory are fundamentally distinct. Their main difference lies in
the fact that care ethics makes relationships, not individuals, morally basic. When care
theorists speak of caring, they conceive of it as a moral quality of relationships; in that
sense, caring cannot be an individual character trait or virtue.
 Nor can this concept of caring be derived from the virtues. Caring is particularly
characterized by mutuality—the various interpersonal ties that can only exist within
relationships.
 But since virtues comprise individual traits rather than relational properties, they cannot
in themselves involve or support the sorts of relational qualities necessary to caring (in
the care ethics sense).
 Critical Remarks
 (1) Caring and justice: Many early theorists assumed that caring should replace traditional
emphases on justice and rights; now, most consider both perspectives essential to a complete
ethics.
 up to this day, care ethics has failed to adequately address important aspects of justice. More
urgently, care ethics must squarely face the challenge of reconciling the values of caring with
considerations of justice, rights, equality, and autonomy.
 But there are problems. Gilligan’s studies suggest that the justice and care perspectives are
mutually exclusive—it’s not possible for people to adopt both perspectives at the same time.
Since the two can call for different responses to the same moral questions, we have the
problem of determining which perspective we should take when considering any particular
moral question.
 Since care ethics rejects the universalism of justice ethical approach, it hard to see how the
particularism of care ethics can be reconciled with the universalism essential to justice.
 Critical Remarks
 Particularism has its own problems. For one thing, it’s rather vague, leaving us
uncertain about how any specific moral problem should be resolved. It also downplays
the objective impartiality that universalism champions, which at times can still be of
great moral importance.
 How can the most important aspects of both justice and care be combined? Care
theorists maintain that justice should be based upon caring itself. How?
 The idea is that if we are to be caring toward others, we will need justice as well. For
instance, Fiona Robinson, a contemporary feminist, maintains both of the care ethics
claims that (a) relationships and caring must remain fundamental and that (b) abstract
(universalist) concepts of justice are ineffective and inappropriate in addressing moral
problems.
 But she adds that if a social system is not just, then caring will be hampered within that
system, and relationships will be forced into forms that make the full realization of
moral caring impossible.
 Critical Remarks
 Exploitative relationships: A common reaction to the ethics of caring and a
criticism often leveled against it by other feminists is that caring invites the cared-
for to take advantage of the carer.
 Caring can be enabling to people who are perfectly happy to receive whatever they
can but are never willing to give. We’ve all run into “sponges” like this—those
who just soak up help and kindnesses from others but never reciprocate.
 In the worst cases, caring relationships may become co-dependencies—one- sided
relationships in which those who are cared-for develop a nearly complete reliance
upon carers to take care of them and meet their needs.
 Care ethicists recognize this to be a very real practical danger, and they offer a
fairly persuasive response.
 Critical Remarks
 First, it’s obvious to everyone that there are serious moral and emotional
weaknesses in people who are inherently selfish (i.e., the “sponges”).
 It is also widely recognized that codependency is a dysfunctional emotional
and psychological condition. Any relationship in which there’s an over-reliance
of one person upon the other, therefore, is flawed.
 As care ethics is all about morally healthy relationships, it directly opposes all
enabling behaviors, codependent relationships, and whatever else might
promote these things.
 In one way or another, all versions of care ethics consider the exploitation of
caring to be morally wrong and even take it to be part of a carer’s moral duty to
avoid allowing such relationships to develop or continue as they are. They also
view the cared-for as having a moral obligation to not exploit or establish a
dependency upon the carer.
 Critical Remarks
 Stereotypes: Care ethics tends to rest upon stereotypes about female and male behavior,
which tend to reinforce male dominance. If we think that men are impartial while women
are not, this may lead us to think twice about assigning women to positions of authority
where impartiality is required.
 The hard distinction between the genders is problematic. Some women are not all that
caring; and some men are quite caring.
 Furthermore, these supposed differences may only be cultural differences. It might be the
case in one culture women are more caring and men are more impartial. But in another
culture this may not be true.
 Michael Slote, a prominent defender of care ethics, notes that in African cultures, both
men and women exhibit caring behaviors; he also argues that there are very strong
elements of care thinking in both Confucian and Buddhist thought.
 Slote concludes that this shows that “the ethics of care can and should be regarded as a
potential overall human morality, rather than as something just about, or at most only
relevant to, women.” (The Ethics of Care and Empathy)
 Final Words
 The ethics of care highlights important moral values largely neglected by
traditional ethics. Yet in attending almost exclusively to the care perspective, early
care theorists didn’t adequately accommodate the equally important implications of
justice and rights.
 Recognizing this, contemporary care theorists are now attempting to reconcile both
justice and caring within a single ethical theory. While the challenge appears
immense, a great deal of work is being done on this problem. It will be interesting
to see what this reconciliation looks like when it is completed.
 Meanwhile, it’s worth pointing out that achieving this reconciliation is not only a
challenge for care theorists. If caring relationships are as morally central as care
theorists maintain, then no one can avoid the conclusion that both justice and care
comprise essential components of morality. Any ethical theory will have to work at
reconciling them. The challenge therefore extends to all of ethics and not just to
care ethics. In offering us this realization, care ethics may have already rendered its
greatest service to ethics.
 Final Words
 “Neither the realm of domestic, personal life, nor that of non domestic,
economic and political life, can be understood or interpreted in isolation
from the other,” writes feminist political philosopher Susan Moller Okin.
(“Gender, the Public and the Private,” 1991)
 These two realms not only overlap, Okin argues, but also can and should
exemplify the values and virtues of each other.
 Elements of altruism and concern for particular, concrete individuals have
a place in the political as well as the domestic realms