MASCULINE VERSUS FEMININE MORALITY

AARON HASS, Ph.D.

WHO IS MORE MOREL, A WOMAN OR A MAN? THE EARLY EXPERIMENTS of psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, the most influential of moral development, seemed to indicate that males tended to be more highly developed than females in their abilities to evaluate and justly   resolve moral dilemmas. However, in a paper in 1977 that she later expanded into the book A Different Voice, Harvard psychologist Carol Gilligan presented an alternative explanation for Kohlberg's findings.

Carol Gilligan believes that men and women focus on different concerns when approaching moral issues. Having a more individualistic and competitive bent, males typically utilize a justice orientation when attempting to come to grips with the issue of conflicting rights. Females, on the other hand, are more likely to adopt a care orientation. A morality of justice assumes that people's interests often conflict and, therefore, we need objective rules to adjudicate those difference. Amorality of care presumes that the welfare of others is intrinsically bound up with one's own well-being. HENCE, I am responsible for your happiness, as well as my own. A morality of care implies that I have a duty to acknowledge and respond to your sensibilities. In fact, males and females are more attuned to circumstances that provide conflict inherent in attending to the feelings of others. Males are more likely to notice conflict pertaining to issues of justice and fairness.

Even during infancy, girls orient themselves to attachment and connectedness via their identification with the mother. Having to separate from the mother and from a male identity, boys orient themselves to individualism and disconnectedness. Through their tie to the mother, girls develop a belief in their similarity to others and, therefore, an enhanced ability to empathize. Pushing away from the mother, boys more profoundly experience a sense of differentness from other. An orientation of connectedness requires sensitivity to people's needs and ascertain benevolence. (Carol Gilligan emphasizes that girls are concerned about not hurting.) An orientation to individualism and competitiveness necessitates rules for fairness.

In a classic dilemma designed by Lawrence Kohlberg, a man is desperate to save his wife, who is dying of cancer. A cure is available, but the druggist who controls the drug chares more money than the man has. Should the man steal the drug? Carol Gilligan quotes an example of how differently Amy and Jake reason about this quandary.