Brandon Reyes

Summary 11
In Chapter 11 the text introduces feminism and the ethics of care. It is said
that the accepted view of feminists is that women are not inferior to men and men
are not inferior to women. Although they believe this, it is also understood by
feminists that men and women have different qualities. The book then introduces
Kohlbergs Stages of moral development; punishment and obedience, individual
instrumental purpose and exchange, mutual interpersonal expectations,
relationships, and conformity, social system and conscience maintenance, prior
rights and social contract or utility, and lastly universal ethical principles. Where
stages 5 and 6 are thought to belong to more mature humans. With these stages a
scenario was presented in which two children, Jake and Amy, decide if stealing is
right or wrong. From this, professor Gilligan analyzed the childrens responses and
concluded that women first appeal to caring for others, rather than attending to the
needs of humanity like men.
So, is there really a difference in the sexes? Firstly, men and women dont
think differently, rather they put emphasis on different things. The reason for this
difference has two theories. The first is that women think differently because of the
social role they are given. The second is that there is an intrinsic connection
between women and their ethics of caring. These thoughts have implications for
moral judgements. For example an ethic of care focuses on close personal
interactions, so one would not be morally obligated to donate to poor children. By
examining the Ethics of Care as an ethical theory it implies that many of the ethical
theories are male dominant and do not include all perspectives. Ethical theories
often put an emphasis on bargaining and calculating rather than on love and caring.
Because the ethics of care focuses on mostly private life, it turns out that it is part
of the ethics of virtue.
Mary Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the Rights of Women is presented in
chapter 11. Wollstonecraft begins by explaining many people appear moral, but
often participate in morally corrupt behavior. She then continues to say that women
have been taught to only consider reputation and for this reason have been
suppressed. From this she concludes that virtue is different from reputation. It is
shown that reputation is only representative of other peoples opinions not
necessarily the truth. Thus, women can be virtuous, but have a poor reputation with
respect to others. Along these same lines, she says that if a man indulges in vice he
can easily recover in the eye of the public, but the same is not true for women.
Wollstonecraft says that society has created a scenario in which two people
with the same virtue are treated differently. The person with the worse character
will be adored by the public, while the other will have more friends in a private
setting. She then concludes that some people have a reputation that is not earned
according to virtues and morality. For this reason the character of a person should
only be judged by God, not the public. The public only considers one virtue with
respect to reputation and that is chastity. Therefore, reputation is not virtuous and
should not be considered so by the public. She continues by saying men are more

under the influence of their appetites than women. Wollstonecraft then introduces
one rule, to not judge someone on their present indulgence in the vices. By not
acting this way, society is producing a weaker women that not only hurts women,
but also men. This is because women have children and instead of teaching these
children virtues they teach them to focus on public appearance, thus hurting future
males. In essence, everyone should be aware of what is being done to women
because once we stop these actions, we will produce a society that is consistent
with moral law.
In the last part of the reading Michael E. Allsopp introduces Feminist Ethics at
Thirty: A Retrospective. This article focuses on the model of Christian Ethics. This
piece first explains that feminist have made the scope of ethics broader by focusing
on the "house-keeping" issues of ethics. For this reason feminists often focus more
on relationships and questions concerning the character of a person. Given this
emphasis it is thought that the goal of feminists is to develop a social ethics. Since
they take on this outlook, it follows that they believe ethics should be collaborative.
Although the ethics of care touches on many subjects that other theories don't, it
does not do a good job in justifying its conclusions. This being said feminist ethics
will continue to mold life as it questions the roles of both males and females in
ethical theories.