Reading around Values: Cares (F) and Rights (M)

Jack, R. and Jack, D.C. (1989) ‘Care and rights: two ways of perceiving the world’, in Moral Vision and Professional Decisions: The Changing Values of Women and Men Lawyers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–26.

Rand Jack and Dana Jack (presumably husband and wife lawyer team) say there are two ways of looking at the world, which happen to divide along public/private, and critically, male/female lines.  They say one perspective focuses on "rights, duties, individual autonomy, and generally applicable rules; the other, on care, responsiveness, avoidance of harm, and interdependent relationships"  The former (typically public, male) perspective has dominated political and social attitudes in British society. The other ( typically private, female) perspective in the 1980s is emerging in public life as a dialogue of moral perspectives.  Men typically operate in a rule-bound Rights system, and women in a caring, mutually supportive system.

Psychologists are a product of a world of gender based public/private assumptions.  Therefore psychologists started by writing about gender based moral/value differences that replicated the public/private space.  Kohlberg started the hierarchical Morality of Rights.  He was measuring the Ethics of Justice against 6 levels of response to a situation. 

1. Obedience and Punishment (small children use parents measures)
2. Individualism and exchange (children see some adults have different systems)
3. Good interpersonal relationships (children want to be seen as good/nice)
4. Maintaining social order (compliance with rules/law)
Only 10% get beyond this moral reasoning development
5. Social contract and individual rights (General rules do not always fairly benefit the minority, so may be broken)
6. Universal principles - Human rights, justice, equality.  (Individuals are prepared to be unpopular to do what they think is right, going against the flow of opinion).

This measures the Self with compliance with societal rules, often set in law.   Women often sit at level 3 because their judgement and behaviour is concerned with relationships and human concerns whereas men sit at level 4 because they comply with (male defined) rules. This is deemed to be an indicator that women are weaker, and less successful than men.  

Gilligan claimed a sex-bias in Kohlberg's theory.  She criticised it as he was a male theoriser, creating a male only database to draw hierarchical conclusions, which were then applied to women.  She said women approached moral problems from an Ethics of Care position which was neither better nor worse as a measure - merely different.  

Gilligan said "The very traits that have traditionally defined the goodness of women, their care for and sensitivity to the needs of others, are those that mark them out as deficient in moral development.”

He does not recognise the feminine voice of compassion, love and non-violence, which is associated with the socialization of girls.