Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

During the 1980s, a number of feminist scholars developed the concept of an ethic of care, which posited an approach to morality focused around caring. This approach drew upon many earlier currents of thought, which argued women's morality centers around nurturing/mothering, cooperation, and maintaining relationships. Sara Ruddick (1980, 1989) espoused an ethics focused around “maternal thinking” (attentive love and trust), which she argued could be used to transform private relations of love and caring into public discussions of peace. Nel Noddings (1984) similarly suggested that an ethic of caring could help create moral people, criticizing dominant ethical approaches as problematically placing “principles above persons.” These works valorize the assumed ethical values of “women,” and have been criticized for their essentialist tendencies. During the same period, Carol Gilligan (1977, 1982) , in her groundbreaking research on moral development, coined the term “ethic of care,” which she compared to an “ethic of justice” to describe two modes of gendered moral reasoning. Gilligan argued that while an ethic of justice primarily reflects fairness and abstract, individual rights, an ethic of care centers around specific contextual circumstances and responsibility in relationships ( Lister 1997 ). According to Gilligan, men are more likely to draw upon an ethic of justice, while ... log in or subscribe to read full text