ABSTRACT
The "different voice", represented more highly among females, and which did not fit well in Lawrence Kohlberg's categories, Carol Gilligan called the "ethics of care". That the "ethics of care" tends to be associated with females and the "ethics of rights" with males is only a tendency and "an empirical observation". The foregoing suggests two important apparent differences between the ethics of care and the ethics of rights: the ethics of care is particularistic, whereas the ethics of rights is universalistic. And the ethics of care conceives of ethical issues as tears in a fabric of relationship that "must be mended with its own thread", whereas, according to the ethics of rights, the solution to moral problems can be found only from an impartial perspective that transcends personal relationships. With respect to these two features, a utilitarian or consequentialist moral conception giving rights no intrinsic standing whatsoever would apparently still contrast with an ethics of care.
