Philosophy 2800
Week 10

Feminism & the Idea of a Female Ethic

A Rough Characterization of Feminism: the view that women are unjustifiably oppressed or undervalued in comparison with men.

Some claim that, while this was once correct, this is no longer so to any substantial degree (not in places like Canada, anyway).

Is this right?

One place this battle gets fought is on the question of human nature, more specifically on the question of women's vs. men's nature.
An Example:  Some claim that even when the barriers to women entering typically male professions are taken down, women will still not enter into those professions at the same rate as men.
Why?  Simply because those professions aren't appealing to as many women as men.
Others claim that if women don't choose a particular career at the same rate as men, this is a sign that women are still being oppressed (in this case, by a society that subtly discourages them from choosing these occupations).
Marilyn Frye: "The forces which make us mark and announce sexes are among the forces which constitute the oppression of women, and they are central and essential to the maintenance of that system." (258)

"For subordination to be permanent and cost effective, it is necessary to create some conditions such that the subordinated group acquiesces to some extent in the subordination." (258)

"For efficient subordination, what's wanted is that the structure not appear to be a cultural artifact kept in place by human decision or custom, but that it appear natural..." (258)

Think of:

the 'Happy Slave'
the idea of 'false consciousness'


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Feminism & Human Nature - Some Central Questions:

1. Do women have a distinct nature or essence?
Clearly, there are biological differences, but are there fundamental psychological differences between men and women?

Are men really from Mars and women from Venus?


2. If women do have a distinct nature, what accounts for this?

  Biology?
Society (patriarchy)?   3. If they do, what implications does this have for the social roles women and men ought to fill?   E.g., women as nurturers, care givers; men as providers *************************************

Plato

Plato argues that people should do the jobs they are naturally suited for.   There is nothing men can do that women cannot do.  
"Natural gifts are to be found here and there in both creatures alike; and every occupation is open to both, so far as their natures are concerned"

But "woman is for all purposes the weaker." (The Republic)

On average, women are not as strong, etc. as men.

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Aristotle

"we should look upon the female state as being as it were a deformity though one which occurs in the ordinary course of nature." (The Generation of Animals, 775a15)  
A woman is a man that lacks something. Women have less heat than men. As a result they are unable to 'cook' their menstrual blood into its final stage of refinement (i.e., semen) "because of the coldness of their nature."

Aristotle viewed women and men as playing distinct roles in pregnancy. Although women carry the babies, it is the men who make the most significant contribution.

The 'flower pot theory of pregnancy': a woman supplies the soil (matter), the man provides the seed (form). "the male contributes the principle which causes motion but the female contributes the matter". (730a27-28)

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A Brief, But Not Entirely Inaccurate, History of Feminism

1. The First Wave (late 1700's - early 1800's)
Mary Wollstonecraft – A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
John Stuart Mill – On the Subjection of Women (1869)

Firmly in the Enlightenment tradition

Equality Feminism: There are no substantial natural differences between women and men psychologically. Social factors explain the differences we observe.

 
Equality feminism only goes so far in thinkers like Mill and Wollstonecraft. To them, fundamental equality is not incompatible with some differences in social roles (i.e., women as wives and mothers).   Contrast with Difference Feminism, i.e.,  there are fundamental differences between women and men (e.g., women are rooted in particularity, men in abstraction).  
Those who take this view often charge equality feminism with 'logocentrism', i.e., the unjustified privileging of male patterns of abstract logical reasoning as the highest form of reasoning.   Difference feminism is typically combined with the claim that men and women are equal or that women are superior to men (e.g., less warlike). (See Grimshaw, 85, 90)

Note that one can be a difference feminist without being committed to the idea that there is such a thing as a natural woman's essence.  That is, one can maintain that women and men do have different 'essences', but that if our social order were to change this differences might alter or go away.

Mary Wollstonecraft - First Wave Equality Feminism

 
The Cause of the Problem:  "women are not allowed to have sufficient strength of mind to acquire what really deserves the name of virtue"
  "Gentleness, docility and a spaniel-like affection are, on this ground, consistently recommended as the cardinal virtues of" women."

"Women are told from their infancy … that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man".


Equal, but with Different Roles: "Let it not be concluded that I wish to invert the order of things. I have already granted that, from the constitution of their bodies, men seem to be designed by Providence to attain a greater degree of virtue. I speak collectively of the whole sex; but I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard?"

 
"Connected with man as daughters, wives and mothers, their moral character may be estimated by their manner of fulfilling those simple duties; but the end … of their exertions should be to unfold their own faculties, and acquire the dignity of conscious virtue."


Patriarchy: "Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a plaything." (All quotations are from A Vindication of the Rights of Women)


2. The Second Wave (late 1800's until mid 1900's)

 
A 'practical' period

Marked by social activism – particularly the movement for women's suffrage.

 
Women obtained the right to vote in federal elections in 1917-8.
Women obtained the right to vote in provincial elections in Newfoundland in 1925.


3. The Third Wave (1949 - present? 1960's - present?)

 
Rebirth of theoretical interest in Feminism.

Simone de Beauvoir – The Second Sex (1949)

 "One is not born but rather becomes, a woman."

When it comes to the question of what a woman is, "there is no truth. An existent is nothing other than what he does … essence does not precede existence: in pure subjectivity, the human being is not anything."

"Of a peasant worker one can say that she is a good or a bad worker … but if one considers a woman [as a woman] … one can say absolutely nothing about her, she falls short of having any qualifications."


Some Themes in Third Wave Feminism
 

1. Difference Feminism
  Carol Gilligan (In a Different Voice, 1982)

Again, this need not be essentialist.

  2. Separating of social categories from biological categories  
i.e., the separation of gender and sex  
Biology is often seen as something to be overcome.  
Jeffner Allen recommends "a collective removal of ourselves from all forms of motherhood."

Shulamith Firestone - "the heart of woman's oppression is her childbearing and childrearing role."


It's common to suggest that biology determines our social situation, e.g., women are nurturing because biology makes them that way.  Some Third Wave feminists have wanted to reverse this claim by arguing that our social situation determines our present biological situation:

 
Weak Version: "While human biological needs and capacities certainly have influenced the societies humans have constructed, so also have social conditions influenced human biology, for example, our size, shape, and even our reproductive capacities." (Nancy Holstrom)

Strong Version: "Gender created anatomical sex." (Monique Wittig)


3. Undermining the Focus on Women's Nature

  
Some Third Wave Feminists argued that earlier feminist work had repeated one of the errors it was trying to correct, i.e., just as pre-feminist work had tended to assume that the viewpoint of men represented the viewpoint of all people, so too feminists had tended to assume that the viewpoint of white, educated, middle class women was the voice of all women.
  "the women's voices most likely to come forth and the women's voices most likely to be heard are, in the United States anyway, those of white, middle-class heterosexual Christian … women."


What about black women, lesbian women, hispanic women, lesbian hispanic women, etc.?

'Standpoint' theory

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Is There Such a Thing as a Female Ethic?

In a famous 1982 work called In a Different Voice:  Psychological Theory and Women's Development, Carol Gilligan argues that the answer is 'yes'.  Women take a quite distinctive approach to ethical questions.
The best way to understand Gilligan's work is in contrast to the views of Lawrence Kohlberg (for whom she was once a research assistant).

Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development:

Developed by tracking the responses to hypothetical moral dilemmas of a group of subjects (all boys). Kohlberg was looking for differences in the subjects' responses as they aged.
The Heinz Dilemma: In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. the drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $400 for the radium and charged $4,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money and tried every legal means, but he could only get together about $2,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying, and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from if." So, having tried every legal means, Heinz gets desperate and considers breaking into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.
1. Should Heinz steal the drug? 1a. Why or why not?
2. Is it actually right or wrong for him to steal the drug? 2a. Why is it right or wrong? …
4. If Heinz doesn't love his wife, should he steal the drug for her? Does it make a difference in what Heinz should do whether or not he loves his wife? 4a. Why or why not?
5. Suppose the person dying is not his wife but a stranger. Should Heinz steal the drug for the stranger? 5a. Why or why not? …
8. It is against the law for Heinz to steal. Does that make it morally wrong? 8a. Why or why not?
9. In general, should people try to do everything they can to obey the law? 9a. Why or why not? 9b. How does this apply to what Heinz should do?…
 Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development: A. Preconventional Level (age 4-10)  
Stage 1 Punishment & Obedience
  This is a self-absorbed stage. One obeys in order to avoid being punished.

I cleaned my room so my mother wouldn't be angry.

  Stage 2 Individual Instrumental Purpose and Exchange (Instrumental Hedonism)
  This is still a self-absorbed stage. One acts only to further one's own interest, but now there is a recognition that others pursue their own interests. This makes 'fair deals' possible.

I will clean my room for a cookie.
 

 B. Conventional Level (age 10-13)
  Stage 3 Mutual Interpersonal Expectations, Relationships and Conformity (Good Boy/Good Girl)
  The expectations of others & the demands of your social role become important. Rightness is a matter of what meets with the approval of the group.

I do my homework because the teacher wants me to.

  Stage 4 Social System & Conscience Maintenance (Law & Order)
  One is loyal to social institutions and rules. Doing what is right means fulfilling one's institutional duties and obligations.

I do my homework because the rules say I have to.
 

 C. Postconventional Level (adolescence to adulthood?)  
Stage 5: Prior Rights and Social Contract (Legalistic)
  One views one's primary moral obligations as arising from what best serves the society  
- a principled justification is given for laws and moral rules – perhaps a social contract, utilitarian concerns.


I ought to pay my taxes because this is what it takes to do my part to keep society running.

  Stage 6: Universal Ethical Principles
  There are universal ethical principles and doing what is right is acting in accordance with those principles.

I ought to pay my taxes because it's the right thing to do.

 Two Points about Kohlberg's Theory
(1) Notice that Kohlberg's levels match up quite closely with some ethical theories we have considered
Level A – egoism

Level B – moral relativism

Level C – Stage 5 – utilitarianism/social contract theory
    Stage 6 – Kantian/deontological theory

(2) Kohlberg doesn't think we all get to stage 6. Most men top out at stage 4 or 5, most women at stage 3.
Men, it turns out, are more ethically sophisticated than women.
Jake seems to be at level 4 or 5. He's focussed on 'doing the math' at some relatively abstract level.


Amy, 11 on the Heinz Dilemma:

 
Heinz shouldn't steal the drug. "I think there might be other ways besides stealing it, like if he could borrow the money or make a loan or something … they should really just talk it out and find some other way to make the money."
  Amy seems to be operating around level 3 where personal relationships are still paramount.
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Gilligan's Response in In a Different Voice

Difference Feminism:  There are typically male and typically female ways of approaching ethics, but that doesn't mean women are inferior morally. They speak in a 'different voice'.
Logocentrism: Kohlberg's schema privileges abstract ethical reasoning (i.e., 'male' ethical reasoning).

"This repeated finding of developmental inferiority in women may, however, have more to do with the standard by which development has been measured than with the quality of women's thinking per se … the moral judgments of women differ from those of men in the greater extent to which women's judgments are tied to feelings of empathy & compassion and are concerned more with the resolution of 'real life' as opposed to hypothetical dilemmas."

The Ethics of Care: Amy says at one point "If [Heinz] 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, and he couldn't get more of the drug."
Amy is rooted in the particular. Jake abstracts all this away.

This rooted, particular, not impartial focus is the core of a type of ethical theory that has become known as The Ethics of Care.


Gilligan gathered 29 women and investigated their thinking about how one should make the decision to have an abortion or not.

Gilligan's Three Levels:
(1) Pre-conventional: self-centred (oriented to individual survival)
"morality is seen as a matter of sanctions imposed by a society of which one is more subject than citizen"
  A 16 year old 'delinquent' on the Heinz Dilemma:
  "I think survival … is the most important thing, more important than stealing."


(2) Conventional: responsibility to others (goodness as self-sacrifice)
 

Self is seen as socially situated. Self must be sacrificed for others.

A 25 year old who is pregnant by a married man:
 

"I just wanted the child and I really don't believe in abortions … [but] I felt a responsibility, my responsibility if anything ever happened to her [his wife] ...."
  (3) Post-conventional: The morality of nonviolence  
"Care becomes a universal obligation" to herself as well as others

An "injunction against hurting … [becomes] a principle governing all moral judgment and action".

 A 25 year old on abortion:  
"I would not be doing myself or the child or the world any kind of favor having this child … I don't need to pay off my imaginary debts to the world through this child, and I don't think that it is right to bring a child into the world and use it for that purpose." **************************************

Some 'Care' Based Approaches to Ethics

Nel Noddings - "women do not tend to appeal to rules and principles in the same sort of way as men;... they are more likely to appeal to concrete and detailed knowledge of the situation, and to consider the dilemma in terms of the relationships involved." (Grimshaw, 89)
Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (1984)
Sara Ruddick - 'Maternal Thinking'
"the task of mothering generates a conception of virtue which might provide a resource for a critique of those values and priorities which underpin much contemporary social life" (Grimshaw, 90)
Caroline Whitbeck - "the practices of caring for others, which have motherhood at their centre, provide an ethical model of the 'mutual realization of people' which is very different from the competitive and individualistic norms of much social life." (Grimshaw, 90)
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Groupwork:  Is there such a thing as a female ethic?  If so, is it traceable to women's 'true' nature or is it a function of how society treats women?

[Philosophy 2800]