Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.
~U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor
In 1982 Carol Gilligan published In a Different Voice, a book that attempted to demonstrate that women and men had different views concerning the concept of justice. Gilligan found that, in general, men believed in a clear-cut, universal “right and wrong” and that punishment should naturally follow wrong actions. Women, on the other hand, seemed to show an “ethic of care” which examined why people did things that might be wrong, and which left a door open to greater degrees of mercy and redemption for those who committed harmful actions. Gilligan stressed that the “ethic of care” was not tied exclusively to women, yet it seemed much more prevalent among the women participants in her study.
Some early feminists, of course, believed that the greater inclusion of women into society could initiate a complete moral transformation. One of the most idealistic of feminists was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who identified the prevailing values of a corrupt America specifically with the men who ran it. Through either biology or social conditioning or whatever, Stanton believed that women had clearly become more humane and the world needed a strong infusion of them, in positions of power, to make the beneficial changes that were sorely needed. This is not, in fact, an uncommon response among leaders of folks who are marginalized and oppressed.
Martin Luther King Jr. exhorted the African American community to become a moral “thermostat” and not merely a moral “thermometer” in US society. They should work toward the capacity to change values and not just reflect them. As thermometers, folks merely integrated into and became participants in the type of class and economic system that existed, whether aspects of it were right or wrong. As thermostats, folks could conceivably change the class and economic system. Integration was essential, but it had to be based on insights, strength, humanity and activism gained through generations of injustice. King seemed to believe that Black folks should integrate into America as moral reformers. Integration into what existed (a society of vast inequality which was waging an insane war in Vietnam) was not a viable option.
In regard to differences in moral attitudes based on gender, one big question is whether men’s and women’s brains were wired differently through evolution. Do we basically have genders which are genetically divergent in regard to basic attitudes concerning moral responses and ways of life? If so, we who want to see change in the world are in for a lot of trouble if this type of determinism is real. Thankfully, the answer seems to be a resounding “no”. Angela Saini’s book Inferior, from a few years ago, put the lie to this theory of differing brains. Indeed, most of the evidence collected about gender differences and brain development show the human brain to be a highly plastic instrument that is readily molded (and even remolded) by its environment.
Research suggests that if women are more caring, people around them made them that way. If men are less merciful, their mental orientation was steered in that direction. The outcomes of a person’s ethical attitude seem to have a lot to do with societal expectations for the differing genders. Traditionally, men seem to have been given social license to give vent to their temper, greed and aggression while women were taught self-restraint. Therefore, to folks like Stanton, the feminine stereotype of the kind nurturer became embraced as woman’s secret weapon against patriarchal domination. The observation that women are better caregivers became, for someone like Stanton, the key to a woman’s moral force in the world. Should we care that the pro-social traits that might make women “better people” might be due overwhelmingly to social conditioning? Or should we thank our lucky stars that these traits were developed? They were much better than the typical male approach to running the world.
Another big question is whether the evil we find in the world – classism, corruption, institutionalized racism, greed, sexism, injustice, intolerance and war – is based on male values. Did the aggression and dominance, toward which men had been encouraged, create our contemporary world structure or is the world as we find it the inevitable result of societies meeting survival needs? If women could have flip-flopped human values, if women had taken the place of men and replaced their values, or remolded their synapses, or infused the world with their more humane counter values, could the world have been saved and our social structures and institutions better? Would our societal structures be completely different? As one of the best sociology professors I ever studied under, Steven Bunker, once pointed out, no matter how radical you purport your vision and intentions for a society to be, if you overthrow a government you will still probably need to hire people to pick up the garbage twice a week.
Another interesting question might be: now that women are gaining equality, are the moral and social values once expected of women gravitating toward the values traditionally embraced by men? In order to succeed in the world, does it behoove a woman to have been molded according to male expectations? Are we now inadvertently molding young women to adopt the male values that have corrupted the world?
Artist Carey Young once did a video called Palais de Justice (Palace of Justice). In this video Young secretly recorded the proceedings of various female judges at the massive Palais de Justice in Brussels. These women appear to be thermometers among the grand, phallic, classically-inspired pillars of the Palais. Observing these female judges would seem to indicate that the structure of traditional Western justice brooks no moral innovation merely based on the inclusion of a different gender and its values. The women seem to be presented as merely taking the places of men on the bench. Can we assume that women are abandoning their predisposition to mercy documented by Gilligan (trying to understand and heal the underlying causes of crime) and walking into and taking places in a world of unforgiving punishment and deterrence created by male values?
The Palais is a grandiose building from the mid-19th century brought to us by King Leopold II, shortly before he began his reign of butchery in the Congo from which Belgium became filthy rich. That we are in what would be considered man’s country is shown by a cloak room filled with large, framed photos of eminent male judges of the past and the judicial robes of current male judges. There is an inspirational portrait of a male jurist jutting his finger in the air to make an impassioned point. The Palais is an imposing structure representing the supposition that the law is universal, fair, impartial and eternal – not the result of mercy-lacking male values. People are dwarfed by the architecture. We see them strolling through huge corridors and hallways conveying the feeling that 100 years from now they will all be dead but the Palais will still be there, serving the same values and function. The Palais seemingly robs each person of his/her individual identity. You get a job here and you become a thermometer regardless of gender. There is no room for transforming into a thermostat.
I wish someone would run Gilligan’s experiment again. A great deal has changed for both men and women since 1982. Perhaps both men and women have changed, and it would be interesting to see how. The existence of this web site, at least, attests to the fact that many men are questioning what they feel and how they should act. It could be that Gilligan’s assertion that women possess differing concepts of justice applied while women, in the US, were part of a more oppressed class of people. Now that gender equality has advanced significantly, would women still so strongly manifest an “ethic of care”? Have more women gravitated toward the male-centered concept of justice? Have some men gravitated toward positions of mercy and forgiveness? Are we all gaining greater control over our lives and challenging the expectations that used to determine our fates?
I wish studies had also been done to see whether an ethic of care might have been demonstrated among all marginalized or victimized groups at that time. Maybe this is a class and race thing and not just a woman thing. Most importantly, we have to ask, with greater social integration, do folks from these groups lose their moral or critical edge? Does such an edge even exist? If a female judge acts as a male judge acted in the past, has she become more ‘male’ or has she just embraced what the male judge had to embrace before her? Maybe this is not about gender values but the necessities of creating workable social and economic situations. Maybe it is about the need to get the garbage picked up twice a week.
I began this review with a quote from Sonia Sotomayor which seems to echo the belief in what Gilligan wrote. Yet, the United States justice system clearly reflects what Gilligan would have considered the male orientation toward justice. Juries are not allowed to consider why a person committed a crime – this is left for the judge during sentencing if the person is found guilty. Every person is considered “responsible” for his/her actions. Either the person did something or he/she did not do something, and it is as simple as that, according to the “male” attitude toward justice, it simply does not matter why people act. In the US a nurse recently killed two of her children as a result, possibly, of post-partum disorder, but she is on trial as a murderer. No sympathy or mercy is being shown toward this person in the press. We have been trained to look at the action and the consequence and not to care about what drove the person to take the action. If a person was truly not responsible for what she did, it is absurd to punish this person. This “female” orientation is lacking in our court system, but it is considered a great success for more and more women to join this system.
The system is said to be objective and fair and the judge and jury are said to be impartial. If you cannot afford an attorney, they give you one. Rising from the Bronx, successfully making it through Yale Law School, Sotomayor winds up at the DA’s office in Manhattan often prosecuting men of color from impoverished and violent neighborhoods. Did she consider that neighborhoods of extreme poverty, drugs, violence and racism might be engines of crime? Do they mention this possibility at Ivy-League law schools? Did she, perhaps, consider alternatives to prosecuting poor folks similar to the poor folks she grew up with, and perhaps using her immense gifts to become a thermostat instead of a thermometer?
Unfortunately, it is going to take more than gender to change things.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
