Review the information in the power point concerning the social construction of gender.

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A commitment to ending the subordination/domination/oppression of women

Definition of Feminism

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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?

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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)?

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