Jean Grimshaw's The Idea Of A Female Ethic

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Women today hold many roles in society. We are mother, care givers, daughters, wives, bosses, employees, educators, arbitrators and the list can go on and on. In my view we are the glue that can hold a family together and the ethical back bone in a still very male dominated society. Males have been the force behind most of the ethical and moral decisions that dominate our world. Women for much of our known history been subservient, dominated, and treated as second class citizens. We have been told that we are too sensitive and not as smart as men. It was believed and debated for many centuries that a women could only be virtues if she was a mother and a wife. This was her role because of her gender. With all the negativity towards women we …show more content…

She discusses what I feel are some of the most important aspect to women in ethics. She believes that many traits that would be called a women’s trait are looked at as deficiency and this is why these values are given no credit by men. Many of early ethical writings have focused on women in the domestic role or private sphere. This type of thinking has made it impossible for many women to be taken seriously when discussing ethics that focus outside the home. Because women moved outside of the home for work it opened up much discussion about their role in ethics and about the role masculine traits has played in shaping the …show more content…

So as we look at war, politics and capitalist economic dominations, as Grimshaw suggests we do, was this due to the male psyche and masculine ethics? I believe that it was and still to a certain extent today is. I do believe that some values and ethics are different between women and men. I believe that the maternal idealism that women have is what makes us different. I think of the story about the two children, the male chooses to steal and the female chooses to have a conversation. I am sure different children would react differently but if we generalize I think Grimshaw got this right. It is this set of ethics that I feel make men more prone to violence and war and can lead us to make statements that the destruction of so much of our world is due to the male ethics or values. This is not a far stretch when we look at history and see who the decision makes were and who the care takers

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