8. Feminist Ethics and Relationships
Outcomes:
By the end of this module you should be able to:
Examine if there considerations of justice that apply especially to women.
Discuss if there is a distinctly feminist ethics of care.
Describe what special responsibilities a care ethic creates.
Video Lectures:
8.1 Structural equality of opportunity (10:23)
The traditional family involved specialization and the division of family labor between men, who acquired the public virtues of business life, and women, who acquired the domestic virtues of family life. One consequence of this division of family labor was structural inequality of opportunity in the workplace. When women joined the workforce, they often found that implicit job specifications included having men’s physiques or having men’s traditional freedom from responsibility for the care of dependent others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6-nHiCcUCi4
8.2 Oppression (15:29)
Conditioned power, which is the ability to dominate through internalized beliefs and attitudes, enabled the subordination of women to men. Traditionally, both men and women accepted an oppressive conceptual framework whose unquestioned assumptions legitimized male domination. Feminists have effectively criticized the naturalness and normalness of these assumptions, and the patriarchal conceptual framework is losing its hold on people. Democratic states, which need their citizens to learn to treat each other as moral equals, did not try to change this situation because they respected a right to family privacy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dYA3zSX5YK0
8.3 Care ethics (10:13)
Whether through upbringing or biology, women appear to have a different way of approaching ethical decisions than do men. A feminist ethics of care seeks to bring the different ethical perspective of women out of the domestic sphere and into the public sphere of paid work. A care ethic emphasizes the discerning perception of the needs of the people involved in a situation. It emphasizes the decision-maker’s responsibilities to the people involved and to the relationships between them. It emphasizes the importance of attending to particular people and to special relationships in our ethical reasoning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-C21FA-5SwM
8.4 Weaknesses of care ethics (11:06)
An ethic of care that seeks to replace conventional morality will have difficulties with using impartial reasoning when it is called for, with responsibilities to distant others or to unborn generations, and with balancing caring for others against self-sacrifice. An ethic of care that seeks to add to conventional morality, rather than replace it, can work around these difficulties.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LZhcYEIklGM
Case Study 8:
Harry and Affirmative Action
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hQRp8gv-1lg