Moral Reasoning and Gender

1. The Kohlberg-Gilligan Debate and Beyond Moral Reasoning and Gender (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

2. Overview Part I. Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development Part II. Gilligan and Moral Voices Part III. Four Models of the Place of Gender in Ethics (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

3. Part One. Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

4. Kohlberg’s Inspiration Kohlberg’sInspiration • 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. (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

5. Kohlberg’s 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 (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

6. Kohlberg’s Stages:Preconventional 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, I’ll 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. (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

7. Kohlberg’s Stages:Conventional 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 (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

8. Kohlberg’s Stages:Post-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..." (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

9. Kohlberg’s Stages:Post-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.” (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

10. Kohlberg’s 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 respondent’s position (to steal the drug or not), but on the basis of the kind of reasoning the answer exhibited. (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

11. Kohlberg’s 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! (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

12. Gender and Kohlberg’s scale • When Kohlberg’s 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. (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

13. Part Two.Gilligan and Moral Voices (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

14. Gilligan’s 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? (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

15. Gilligan’s 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. (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

16. Gilligan’s 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 Kohlberg’s framework. (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

17. Gilligan’s CritiqueIntroduction • Gilligan began to look more closely at the responses she was receiving in her work, and began to suspect that Kohlberg’s framework did not illuminate the responses she was encountering. It was like trying to put round pegs into square holes. (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

18. Gilligan’s 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. (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

19. 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 everyone’s suffering Preserve emotional connectedness Responsibility toward real individuals Differences between Men’s Moral Voices and Women’s Moral Voices (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

20. 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 Differences between Men’s and Women’s View of the Self (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

21. 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 Differences between Men’s and Women’s View of Moral Safety (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

22. Stages of Women’s 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 (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

23. Part Three.Four Models of the Place of Gender in Ethics (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

24. How do we understand Gilligan’s claims? Four possible models: • Separate but equal • Men and women have different but equally valuable moral voices • Superiority thesis • Women’s moral voices are superior • Integrationist thesis • Only one moral voice, same for both men and women • Diversity thesis (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

25. How do we understand Gilligan’s claims? Four possible positions: • Separate but equal • Superiority thesis • Integrationist thesis • Diversity thesis (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

26. 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” (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

27. The Superiority Thesis Superiority thesis • Women’s moral voices are superior • Criticisms • Inversion of traditional claims of male superiority • Exclusionary • Demands that one side of the comparison be the loser (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

28. 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 (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

29. 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 (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

30. Two Models of Internal Gender Diversity There are two ways of thinking about the relationship between masculinity and femininity within each individual • Exclusive • Inclusive (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

31. 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 (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

32. 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. (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

33. The Bem Scale In Sandra Bem’s conceptualization of gender, an increase in femininity is not bought at the price of a decrease in masculinity and vice versa (c) Lawrence M. Hinman

34. Conclusion • Thinking about gender in Bem’s framework allows us to to appreciate both the feminine and the masculine moral voices within each of us and to avoid traditional stereotypes. (c) Lawrence M. Hinman