Carol Gilligan Summary

In health and social care sector, health care professionals take into account four key ethical principles when providing service to the service users. The key ethical principles are justice, autonomy, beneficence and non-maleficence. In health and social care settings people must be treated fairly without being judgemental regardless of who they are or where they come from. Health care professionals must allow their service users choose the type of services or treatment they want and the professional should support them in getting quality care that will benefit their service users. Also, health care professional must not

Therefore, division of moral labor creates a different structure of moral thought in males and females and the cultural expectation of men and women to “exhibit moral dichotomy” (p.96) gives rise to different primary moral commitments in both genders. Due to this, Friedman argues that men are more inclined towards the moral commitment of rules and principles and females are inclined towards moral commitments of responsiveness and care. Friedman’s views about the origin of moral dichotomy resonate with Weeks.

It helps us shape an overarching ethos of care. It helps me understand when and how I can best support my grandpa as a person, not just as a patient. But I feel these discussions have more impact when they are focused on areas such as consent and understanding. Academic guidance on abstract ideas such as compromised autonomy seems to rarely translate to a practical benefit for carers. It’s all fine and well to tell me I’m reducing grandpa’s autonomy by tracking him, but practically, what is my liberty-ensuring alternative? Better then, to guide carers as to how they can best inform and prepare their dementia suffering family members for the methods we can use in keeping them

Feminist ethics focuses on attempting to reconstruct traditional ethics that would devalue women’s morals. Feminist philosopher Alison Jagger claims that traditional ethic have let women down in five ways. First one is that the concerns of women’s interests and issues are seen to be belows men’s. The second is the stereotype of women are to do housework, take care of children, and tend to the elderly. The third is the implication that women are not morally mature as men. The fourth are the traditional cultural stereotypes that put more masculine traits in favor of men, such as, interdependence, community, and connections. The fifth is the favorability of men on moral reasoning in the emphasis of rules and rights, and being impartial to women on moral reasoning on relationships and responsibilities.

This whole class was based on victims’, the issues they face, the history of their rights movement, current rights and programs to assist them, and the types of services provided to them. This week was focused on something a little different, their service providers. Providers have many responsibilities, such as building rapport and following certain protocols of care, but their job does not end there. In addition to following a very specific standard of care, they have to abide by a certain set of rules and regulations. One of these regulations is called a code of ethics. Ethics are a statement of standards that reflect morals and/or values. Ethics come in to play in every waking moment for a service provider,

After looking at Kohlberg’s theory last week it was refreshing to read about Gilligan’s theory of women’s moral development. I like that Gilligan believes that women are not inferior to men in their personal or moral development, but that they are just different. The book discusses how women develop in a way that is more focused on connections with others instead of separation and tend to work from an ethic of care (p. 349). Having talked about this in class I do feel as if women place value on their connections with others while making decisions. I know that I try and think about everyone involved before I make important decisions. Sometime this leads to putting others before myself and this is something that I’m trying to become better about.

While ethics theories often focus on justice, care, an "equally valid moral perspective," is usually disregarded because of male bias. The two perspectives are often pleasant-sounding, but a need for care point of view precedence exists. While truth is evident in both these statements, the problem of distinguishing between them becomes apparent soon after. Many feminist look to psychologist Carol Gilligan's research for evidence to confirm the difference between characteristically male and female approaches to moral decision making. Her research illustrated how men almost unfailingly focus on justice when making moral decisions and women use justice and care in equal proportions in their moral judgments. While men and women take different

Therefore in her theory she claims that males view morality as involving issues of conflicting rights. The other side of Gilligan's dichotomy believes that females have a typically care/response orientation because of their perception of the self as connected to and interdependent with others, their basing of identity on close personal relationships, their sensitivity not to endanger or hurt, their concern for welfare and care of others and for harmonious relationships in concrete situations. Thus, Gilligan believes that females view morality as involving issues of conflicting responsibilities. (Walker, 1990).

The next important virtue within the realm of virtue ethics is the ethics of care “which implies that there is moral significance in the fundamental elements of relationships and dependencies in human life. ” A good way to explain the ethics of care is that they are putting moral ideals into action. The foundations in the ethics of care are developed through childhood when we are being raised in a nurturing environment by our parents when we are young and then later in life reviving that feeling as we care for those around us that aren’t capable of caring for themselves. The ethics of care is also a profound system used by people in all fields of mental wellbeing and counseling. “Critics fault care ethics

Gilligan questioned the dominant view of psychological development which placed the ability to think in terms of universal, impersonal, principles at the apex of moral thinking, claiming that this reflected the male tendency to value separation, objectivity, and autonomy over connectedness and relationships. Normative principles

satisfaction, respect for autonomy is only one out of a range of moral principles. In health care ethics,

Ethics of care can be defined as “a normative ethical theory often considered a type of virtue ethics. Dominant traditional ethical developed ethical theories based on an understanding of society as the aggregate of autonomous, rational individuals with an emphasis on rules, duties, justice, rights, impartiality, universality, utility and preference satisfaction; care ethics, on the other hand, developed based on the understanding of the individual as an interdependent, relational being and emphasized the importance of human relationships and emotion based virtues such as benevolence, mercy, care, friendship, reconciliation, and sensitivity.”

In this vein the concern that care ethics may not represent as an authentic and empowering voice as it may suggest is motivated by statistics which expose the vast socioeconomic, sex and ethnic discrepancy between those whom receive and those whom conduct care work and the possibility that care ethics must then present a will to power focused through the concept of ressentiment . That it is the disempowered, marginalised and underrepresented in society whom take on the majority of care aligns to Nietzsche’s suggestion that when under coercion, the feelings of the oppressed towards their masters becomes focused on reaffirming the traits and value held endogenously to the oppressed as virtues (Nietzsche,

“I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus--but John says the very worse thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house” (Gilman 770). Through this quote, Charlotte Perkins Gilman expresses the issues of the narrator. The narrator quickly changes her mindset into what John would be telling her is right. This shows that the narrator has adapted to the sexist beliefs and expectations that John has told her of. This causes her to believe what he claims to be true, rather than having her own opinions and statements. The mental issue soon causes the narrator to destroy everything that she’s surrounded by, especially the wallpaper, in hopes that this could help her cope with her feelings. Gilman’s overall message to the audience is how women are forced to believe in sexist expectations. In Claire Miller’s, “Sexes Differ on Persistence of Sexism,” she is explaining how being a women in the United States today is hard because of the constant feeling of being unequal. “Young Women Get Stiffer Punishment, Fewer Services in State’s Juvenile Justice System,” by Erica Green expresses how girls and women are never given fair chances for redemption, whereas boys and men are given more opportunities to show that they are a changed person. Chelsea Gibson in, “Feminism is misunderstood--and more necessary than ever,” she argues that feminism is necessary

However, there are limits to how far Kohlberg’s theory of morality can be taken. When doing the research to develop his theory Kohlberg only interviewed male participants, completely ignoring the possibility that females could have a different outlook on morality to males. Carol Gilligan (1982, 1993) recognised that this was an issue with