Carol Gilligan Ethic Of Caring Summary

“The Declarations of Sentiments and Resolutions” by Elizabeth Cady Stanton is an interesting and persuasive essay on women's rights and equality. The essay uses pathos, logos, and ethos to capture the reader's attention and draw them in into this argumentative piece. Each appeal deeply exercises the importance of equality for both men and women. Throughout her essay, Stanton uses pathos, logos, and ethos to draw the reader's attention and persuade them to stand up for women inequality.

Women have long been fighting for their right to be seen as equal to men. Even to this day, women continue to fight for their rights, things such as the right to non-gender discriminatory wages. While there may be some arguments over the state of gender equality in the modern world, it is undeniable that there have been great strides made toward recognizing the female 's worth in the workforce and as a human being. Despite these strides, however, things are still not yet ideal for women and many of the issues females face today are the very same issues that have been plaguing them for decades. While it is unfortunate the oppression of women has been so long-lived, the length of that exposure has thankfully enabled many talented writers to both lament over the fact and emphasize the need for gender equality.

Women have been a vital key to the shaping and progression of our society. Throughout time, women’s roles and opportunities in the family, workplace, and society have greatly evolved. They started from being housewives that don’t have many rights, even in the household, to being valued citizens in our

In the national General Social Survey (GSS), more than one-third of the public agree with this statement: “It is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family.” Thus, the cultural belief of Woman’s Rights is (and is still) being used today. Though with it’s positive actions also comes with its strained bias and social issues. Women are often treated by men as “pure” and should be “protected”

Gilligan illustrated this view as a morality of care and argued that it was a distinct moral orientation, not just one of Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. She believed that this orientation resulted in different reasoning and ways of resolving moral conflict situations.

The role that women play in society has changed and evolved numerous times throughout our nation’s history. Women have been viewed as both pious and ungodly, chaste and immoral, and both precious and worthless. However, what has continued to remain constant in the lives of women is the unchanging feeling of inequality and insufficiency compared to their male counterparts. Those feelings endured by women are decidedly timeless, no matter what other circumstances exist within their lives. There are indeed similarities between the lives of the women in Lepore’s biography Book of Ages and Wilson’s autobiographical novel Our Nig. Both Frado and Jane Franklin Mecom were born at a disadvantage because of the sole fact that they were female. They each

Many would believe such statement to be true, “we live in a men’s world”. This is a similar occurrence in the story of Laura Secord. Mrs. Secord lived at a time were men are the dominate species and they were consider to be “breadwinners” whereas females were expected to be the caregivers. Sarah Anne Curzon is the author of “The Heroine of 1812”, that beautifully relates the bravery of Mrs. Secord and the obstacles she faces as a female living in the 1800`s. This paper will illustrate the prejudice against females in the 1800`s and the discrimination females face in today`s society.

For century’s women were viewed to be inferior to Men. In some cases, women were not even considered to be human. Our sole purpose for living was to please men and reproduce. Although women bare the gift of creating life inside their womb and giving birth it is still seen as weakness as motherhood and nurturing women are feeble.

However, according to Gilligan and Noddings care ethics or "ethic of caring" as Noddings calls it is an innate act of compassion, independent of the prospect of reciprocity. Writing to critique Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development which viewed women as morally incompetent beings, Gilligan as well as Noddings argued that women’s ability to bear and nurture children renders them compassionate and influences their perception of morality. In A Different Voice, (1982) Gilligan therefore wrote: “the very traits that traditionally have defined the ‘goodness’ of woman, their care for and sensitivity to the needs of others, are those that mark them as deficient in moral development" (18). In other words, Gilligan states that the ethic of care is based on compassion and nonviolence as opposed to the ethic of justice, the premises on which Kohlberg models his theory of moral development.

Women and men have had certain roles in society that were understood amongst them to be specified for their particular gender. Males were known to have the leading role as head of the house hold and the bread winner while the woman’s duty was to stay at home and take care of the house and children. While many people years ago deemed this way of life and practice to be the right and ethical thing to do, times have changed and so this kind of treatment towards a woman’s equality must be questioned. Even though times have changed, this mindset of a woman’s ability to be as good as a man has not completely gone away. In today’s society a woman contributes to the economy and her family as equally as that of a man. Therefore, women should share equal rights and opportunities as their gender counterparts.

In Things fall apart, women are featured as the main teachers of children. They tell them stories, teach them how to behave with other people and especially the girls are taught a higher level of manners rather than the boys, " children sat around their mother's cooking fire telling stories," (Achebe 25). The children are taught good morals and traditional values by their parents and in this case, their mothers, who teach them social values and good interpersonal skills. Women have been regarded as inferior objects in societies but this does not turn them down from performing their societal roles especially that of being the educator of the children at home.

Not only are woman subjected to society norms based on their personality characteristics, but also on their life choices and “domestic responsibilities” questions arise for woman like “who will care for you children and husband”. Montague Kern and Paige P. Edley state that women will continue to be “criticized for abandoning their traditional family roles” (1). This topic is not something that is brought up to their male counterparts. I don’t believe I have ever heard a man be questioned on who was going to assume the responsibility of raising their children. So until society genuinely accepts that raising children and other domestic issues are shared endeavors, then women will continue to face this barrier. (Robson, 208)

The books I’ve chosen to review are set on two different continents. This makes the comparison of the lives of women across the world more efficient and broader. What makes the comparison more practical, realistic and interesting is the fact that the characters in the two books 'The Woman Warrior ' and 'Wild ', lived in the same century. The authors specifically bring out the duties and the expectation that mothers were held to in the upbringing of their daughters as at that time and place. The authors, however, present the picture of motherhood in a fairly narrow view. They ignore the role of mothers in the upbringing of their sons and instead dwell on their duties and responsibilities in the bringing up of their daughters (Kingston & Gordon 2005). Therefore, I chose to compare how the theme of motherhood has been portrayed in the two ethnically diverse texts.

It is widely known that some people possess personalities that have the natural ability to be more empathetic and caring towards others compared to other people. Unfortunately, the stereotype and generalizing of viewing women as automatically more empathetic than men is also prominent in today’s culture. This fundamental image of women and men possessing different views on morality is discussed with Carol Gilligan’s theory of “care ethics” which is more based on feministic views compared to Kohlberg’s “justice ethics” which focuses on the moral development of boys (Caputo, 2000).

Throughout history, women have been seen in many different lights. From a woman’s perspective she is strong, smart, helpful and equal to men. In the eyes of men, she is seen as the weaker being, the housewife, and the caretaker. By looking at the following pieces of writing, one can see that through the centuries, women have struggled to break out of the mold that man had put her in and make themselves known in society as important.