Moral Reasoning and Gender

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Moral Reasoning and Gender

• The Kohlberg-Gilligan Debate and Beyond

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Overview

• Part I. Kohlbergs Theory of Moral Development
• Part II. Gilligan and Moral Voices
• Part III. Four Models of the Place of Gender in
  Ethics

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Part One. Kohlbergs Theory of Moral
Development
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Kohlbergs Inspiration

• Disobeying the law for a higher cause
• The Founding of Israel
• Why do some people feel they must obey the letter
  of the law while others believe that there is a
  higher law?
• Most countries, including the United States, are
  founded through illegal acts of rebellion or
  revolution.
• In order to answer this question, Kohlberg began
  to look at the ways in which people develop
  morally.

KohlbergsInspiration
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Kohlbergs Stages

• Eventually, Kohlberg suggested a stage theory of
  moral development
• Preconventional Morality
• 1. Punishment-obedience
• 2. Personal reward orientation
• Conventional Morality
• 3. The good boy/nice girl Orientation
• 4. The law and order orientation
• Post-conventional Morality
• 5. Social contract orientation
• 6. Universal ethical principle orientation

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Kohlbergs StagesPreconventional Morality

• Preconventional Morality
• Stage 1 Punishment-Obedience Orientation
• Avoid (physical) punishment
• High school example One middle school teacher
  has latecomers do pushups--50 of them--in front
  of the class.
• Stage 2 Personal Reward Orientation
• You scratch my back, Ill scratch yours
• High school example A group of high school
  students involved in a cooperative learning
  activity get upset because one of their group
  members is repeatedly absent and did not do any
  work.

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Kohlbergs StagesConventional Morality

• Conventional Morality
• Stage 3 The good boy/nice girl Orientation
• In an inner city high school student's journal,
  she wrote "I am going to work harder in school so
  I won't let you down because if you think I can
  make it then I can make it"
• Stage 4 A Law and Order Orientation
• "Move carefully in the halls". This rule
  reinforces the fundamental purpose of government
  to protect the health and welfare of its citizens

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Kohlbergs StagesPost-conventional Morality

• Post-conventional Morality
• Stage 5 Social Contract Orientation
• Example for a handout in a high school class
  "Please remember that this is your room and your
  class. The behavior and participation of each
  person will shape the type of learning that will
  occur. Since one person's behavior affects
  everyone else, I request that everyone in the
  class be responsible for classroom management. To
  ensure that our rights are protected and upheld,
  the following laws have been established for this
  classroom..."

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Kohlbergs StagesPost-conventional Morality

• Post-conventional Morality
• Stage 6 Universal Ethical Principle Orientation
• an orientation toward universal ethical
  principles of justice, reciprocity, equality, and
  respect
• Very rare. ExampleS Gandhi, Mother Theresa,
  Martin Luther King, Jr.
• High school teacher "I will not tolerate any
  racial, ethnic, or sexual slurs in this
  classroom. It is not fair to erase someone's
  face. In this room, everyone is entitled to equal
  dignity as a human being.

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Kohlbergs Method

• In order to determine which stage of moral
  development a person was at, Kohlberg presented
  the person with moral dilemmas
• The Case of Heinz and the Druggist.
• Mr. Heinz's wife is dying. There is one drug that
  will save her life but it is very expensive. The
  druggist will not lower the price so that Mr.
  Heinz can buy it to save his wife's life. What
  should he do? More importantly, why?
• Moral dilemmas were judged, not according to the
  respondents position (to steal the drug or not),
  but on the basis of the kind of reasoning the
  answer exhibited.

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Kohlbergs Initial Basis

• Initially, Kohlberg administered his test to
  people all over the world, being careful to
  include all races, to include rural as well as
  urban dwellers, etc.
• a Malaysian aboriginal village,
• villages in Turkey and the Yucatan, and
• urban populations in Mexico and the United States
• There was only one thing he forgot
• He only administered his dilemmas to males!

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Gender and Kohlbergs scale

• When Kohlbergs instrument was administered on a
  large scale, it was discovered that females often
  scored a full stage below their male
  counterparts.
• The moral reasoning of women and girls was more
  likely to value looking for a solution that
  preserved connections. This often looked like
  the good girl orientation, Stage 4.

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Part Two.Gilligan and Moral Voices
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Gilligans Initial Research

• Gilligan began with an interest in moral
  development
• She had been a teaching assistant for Erik
  Erikson
• She was particularly interested in the issue
  Kohlberg raised why do some individuals
  recognize a higher moral law, while others simply
  are content to obey the rules without question?

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Gilligans Initial Research

• Here initial research project was directed toward
  draft resisters during the Vietnam war.
• Nixon cancelled the draft just as her project was
  getting started.
• She switched to study women who had made
  difficult moral choices about abortion.
• Not originally concerned about gender issue.

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Gilligans CritiqueIntroduction

• In light of the differences between the scores of
  males and females on the Kohlberg scale, one
  could draw either of two conclusions
• females are less morally developed than males, or
• something is wrong with Kohlbergs framework.

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Gilligans CritiqueIntroduction

• Gilligan began to look more closely at the
  responses she was receiving in her work, and
  began to suspect that Kohlbergs framework did
  not illuminate the responses she was
  encountering. It was like trying to put round
  pegs into square holes.

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Gilligans Concept of Voice

• The metaphor of voice replaced orientation and
  theory.
• Concrete and specific
• Allows harmony without imposing sameness
• Not competitive or combative but collaborative
• Combines both emotion and content
• Voices may be described in a wide vocabulary that
  has nothing to do with right or wrong, true or
  false
• Voices may be different without excluding one
  another.

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Differences between Mens Moral Voices and
Womens Moral Voices

• Men
• Justice
• Rights
• Treating everyone fairly and the same
• Apply rules impartially to everyone
• Responsibility toward abstract codes of conduct

• Women
• Care
• Responsibility
• Caring about everyones suffering
• Preserve emotional connectedness
• Responsibility toward real individuals

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Differences between Mens and Womens View of the
Self

• Men
• Autonomy
• Freedom
• Independence
• Separateness
• Hierarchy
• Rules guide interactions
• Roles establish places in the hierarchy

• Women
• Relatedness
• Interdependence
• Emotional connectedness
• Responsiveness to needs of others
• Web of relationships
• Empathy connectedness guide interactions
• Roles are secondary to connections

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Differences between Mens and Womens View of
Moral Safety

• Men
• Sense of gender identity grounded in initial act
  of separation from mother
• Threatened by anything that threatens sense of
  separation
• Being at the top of the hierarchy is appealing

• Women
• Sense of gender identity grounded in initial act
  of identification with mother
• Threatened by anything that undermines sense of
  identification
• Experience top of hierarchy as isolated and
  detached

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Stages of Womens Moral Development

• Concern for individual survival
• Transition from selfishness to responsibility
• Goodness equated with self-sacrifice
• Transition from self-sacrifice to giving
  themselves permission to take care of themselves
• Goodness seen as caring for both self and others
• Inclusive, Nonviolent
• Condemns exploitation and hurt

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Part Three.Four Models of the Place of Gender
in Ethics
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How do we understand Gilligans claims?

• Four possible models
• Separate but equal
• Men and women have different but equally valuable
  moral voices
• Superiority thesis
• Womens moral voices are superior
• Integrationist thesis
• Only one moral voice, same for both men and women
• Diversity thesis

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How do we understand Gilligans claims?

• Four possible positions
• Separate but equal
• Superiority thesis
• Integrationist thesis
• Diversity thesis

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The Separate but Equal Thesis

• Separate but equal Men and women have different
  but equally valuable moral voices
• Criticisms
• Reinforces traditional stereotypes
• Hard to retain the ...but equal part
• Suggests that men and women have nothing to learn
  from one another, since each has its own
  exclusive moral voice
• Devalues men with a female voice and women with
  a male voice

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The Superiority Thesis

• Superiority thesis
• Womens moral voices are superior
• Criticisms
• Inversion of traditional claims of male
  superiority
• Exclusionary
• Demands that one side of the comparison be the
  loser

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The Integrationist Thesis

• Integrationist thesis
• Only one moral voice, same for both men and women
• Morality is androgynous
• Criticisms
• Loses richness of diversity
• Tends to be assimilationist in practice, reducing
  other voices to the voice of the powerful majority

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The Diversity Thesis

• Diversity thesis
• Suggests that there are different moral voices
• Sees this as a source of richness and growth in
  the moral life
• External diversity
• Different individuals have different, sex-based
  moral voices
• Internal diversity
• Each of us have both masculine and feminine moral
  voices within us
• Minimizes gender stereotyping

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Two Models of Internal Gender Diversity

• There are two ways of thinking about the
  relationship between masculinity and femininity
  within each individual
• Exclusive
• Inclusive

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Exclusive Models of Internal Gender Diversity

• Traditionally, we have thought of gender in
  exclusionary terms
• The more masculine a person is, the less feminine
  that person is
• The more feminine a person is, the less masculine
  that person is

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Exclusive Models of Internal Gender Diversity

• In this model, which is the most common
  traditional model, an increase in masculinity is
  bought at the price of a decrease in femininity,
  and vice versa.

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The Bem Scale

• In Sandra Bems conceptualization of gender, an
  increase in femininity is not bought at the price
  of a decrease in masculinity and vice versa

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Conclusion

• Thinking about gender in Bems framework allows
  us to to appreciate both the feminine and the
  masculine moral voices within each of us and to
  avoid traditional stereotypes.