A Summary of Masculine vs Feminine Ethics

The qualities associated with traditional “masculine” ethics are rational, indifferent, objective, and abstract. Traditional masculine ethics is also individualistic (each person is autonomous).

Its focus is on the public realm, societal interactions, and contractual relationships that don’t involve a lot of emotion.

Characteristics of the ethics of care are the opposite of masculine ethics, and include emotional, caring, irrational, and concrete. Care ethics focuses on particular interpersonal relationships (the private realm). Care ethics is communitarian, which means that the people who utilize it (mostly women) build their lives around other people.

The ethics of care has been the subject of criticism because it perpetuates sexist views and stereotypes about women. Care ethics basically implies that women are supposed to be the emotional, caring ones while men are supposedly more fair than women because they are less emotional.

This brings me to the second criticism, which states that rationality is needed to be ethical, and since women by nature are less rational than men, they can’t be as ethical as men. Many Feminists have a big problem with this.