Applying the Concept of Gender: Unsettled Questions

Abstract

In commenting on Susan Bordo's discussion of gender bias, 1 both support and build on her contention that women's exclusion from philosophical discourse has been epistemologically and politically significant. But I also explore difficulties associated with applying the concept of gender and I voice concern about how to characterize the perspectives we share as women. Finally, I consider some theoretical and political limitations of utilizing gender as an analytical category.

The Ethic of Care vis-â-vis the Ethic of Rights: A Problem for Contemporary Moral Theory

“…Instead of providing a novel explanation of ethics, however, Gilligan has highlighted the ethic of rights and some of the difficulties with it, revealed a part of the ethic of care that had been present but largely invisible before, and suggested predictable ways of reforming this ethical system. In other words, Gilligan retells a particular official story (Upin 1992, 180‐83), the story of ethical theory which is the ethic of rights, and modifies it slightly. As Davis says, Gilligan does deny some of our examined assumptions by asking how “girls” and “women” fit in and appeals to many of our shared concerns about our individual and collective well‐being.…”