phil week 7
A commitment to ending the subordination/domination/oppression of women
Definition of Feminism
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
Are there psychological (not physical) differences between men and women?
They disagree; no unified answer to question of possible psychological differences between women
Women’s movement of 60's and 70's rejected psychological differences
Supposed differences, e.g., men rational, women emotional--a mere stereotype
If see such differences, due to conditioning/up bringing
Women have been conditioned by an oppressive system to behave in “feminine” ways
Feminism’s answer to question of whether men and women think differently
Female style of thinking has insights missed in more male-dominated thinking
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) http://hettingern.people.cofc.edu/Intro_Philosophy_SP_2011/Feminist_Ethics_Table.htm
Recent feminist thinkers suggested women/men do think differently
According to the scale, those who put a focus on relationships, loyalty and trust with people (typical of women) are on a lower level than the typical male approach of appealing to universal ethical principles
Famous Harvard education psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg has a scale of moral development that suggests women are less morally developed than men
Heinz drug stealing story: Shows how girls and boys think differently and girls end up lower on this scale (147-148)
Jake thinks like typical male, seeing the situation as a conflict of 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 and focuses on the 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 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
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
Feminist ethics (e.g., Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice) argues for a feminist point of view in ethics and rejects idea that an ethic of care is a lower level of moral development
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.
Nurture: Women think differently because of social role to which they have been assigned
Been assigned to do the housework and take care of the kids
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
They come equipped by nature with required (care giving) skills
How account for this general difference between men and women (if there is such)?