The Need for
Feminist Moral Theory
The claim that feminism requires a
transformation of moral theory predictably encounters not
only hostility but honest skepticism. Skeptics wonder
whether there is or can be such a thing as a distinctively
feminist moral theory. They doubt that it could be more
valid than, say, Marxist mathematics or Communist physics,
since they imagine that the validity or truth of a theory
should not depend on political outlook or gender. They may
acknowledge that traditional principles of fairness or
equality must be applied to women in ways that have not been
applied in the past, but they disagree that the principles
or the theories in which they are embedded need to be
transformed....
[Carol] Gilligan and various feminist moral
theorists now speak of two main perspectives in the
interpretation of moral problems: the "justice perspective"
and the "care perspective." The justice perspective
emphasizes universal moral principles and individual
conscience. The care perspective pays more attention to
people's needs and to the relations between actual people;
it considers how these relations can be kept in good
condition or repaired if damaged. On traditional moral
theories, girls and women have been thought to be less
morally advanced than boys and men; on feminist theories it
might be boys and men who are morally slower because of
their underdeveloped capacities for relatedness and for
caring about others.
Empirical studies have shown that females
are significantly more inclined than males to cite
compassion and sympathy as reasons for their moral
positions. We need theories to assess such differences as
these and the others discussed, if they do indeed exist, and
to consider whether and how, for instance, justice and care
can be combined, or if not, whether and how they are
incompatible. Feminist moral theorists are exploring these
issues....
Traditionally, the experience of women has
been located to a large extent in the context of the family.
In recent centuries the family has been thought of as a
private domain distinct not only from the public domain of
the polis, but also from the domains of production and the
marketplace. Women (and men) certainly need to develop moral
inquiries appropriate to the context of mothering and of
family relations, rather than accepting the application to
this context of theories developed for the marketplace or
the polis or dismissing family issues as outside morality
because governed by "natural sentiments." We can certainly
show that mothering requires moral decisions and guidelines
and that these must often be different from those that now
seem suitable for various other domains of activity. But we
need to do more. We need to consider whether distinctively
feminist moral theories, suitable for the contexts in which
the experience of women has been or will continue to be
located, are better moral theories than those already
available and better for other domains as well....
Experience and
Moral Inquiry
The experience of women so far has been
distinctively different from the experience of men. We need
a theory about how to count the experience of women....
The insights offered by and the reliability
of women's experience in engaging in the process of moral
inquiry should be presumed to be as valid as in the case of
men. To take a given moral theory such as a Kantian one and
to decide that those who fail to develop toward it are
deficient is obviously to impose a theory on experience,
rather than letting experience affect the fate of theories,
moral and other than moral. We can assert that as long as
women and men experience different problems and as long as
differences of approach to moral problems are apparent,
moral theory ought to reflect the experience of women as
fully as it reflects the experience of men....
Mothering and
Markets
When we bring the experience of women fully
into the domain of moral consciousness, we can see that the
most central and fundamental social relation is that between
mother or mothering person and child. It is mothering
persons and children who turn biological entities into human
social entities through their interactions....
In the society imagined in the model based
on assumptions about rational economic man, connections
between people become no more than instrumental....
If instead we recognized the centrality of
the relation between mothering person and child, the
competition and desire for domination often thought of as
characteristic of "human nature" would appear as a
particular and limited connection suitable only, if at all,
for a restricted marketplace....
A feminist approach to moral theory leads
us to ask whether morality should not make room first of all
for the human experience reflected in the social bond
between mothering person and child and for the human
projects of nurturing and of growth apparent for both
persons in the relation....Instead of seeing the relation
between mothering person and child as peripheral and
anomalous, and rational exchange as central, we might
reverse the location of the "heart" or "foundation" or
"core" of society....
Perhaps no human relations should be
thought of as paradigmatic for all the others.
[Virginia Held, Feminist Morality:
Transforming Culture, Society, and Politics, p. 64-72.
Brackets added.]