ABSTRACT
Emerging as a specific area of academic philosophy in the 1980s, feminist ethics begins with the assertion that there is a masculine bias in traditional ethics. Feminist ethicists have demonstrated that a great deal of the Western philosophical tradition of ethical thinking has a masculine bias in the sense that it focuses on and prioritizes the experiences and values of men over those of women. This bias is more often evident through a lack of attention to certain interests and experiences than through explicit denigration of them. This entry examines dominant themes in feminist ethics as scholars seek to reformulate ethics in ways that regard women and women's experiences and values as equally important. Each major strain of thought—liberal, Marxist, radical, psychoanalytical, socialist, and postmodern—attempts to address the causes and solutions its framework identifies for the subordination of women. A major area of inquiry surrounds the ethics of care. While feminist ethics often concerns itself with the so-called “private” realm of family and personal relations, care for children and other dependents, the ethics of care model has been widely adapted, most frequently within research on transnational caregiving. Interest in expanding feminist ethics into global frameworks has led to more broadly defined concepts of caring organizations. As personal, societal, and political lives overlap, feminist ethics continues to expand beyond emotion and bodily experience, areas of life which have been regarded as “feminine,” to examine experiences which do not fit comfortably into traditional moral frameworks.
