Feminist+Thought

=__**Woman Philosophers**__=

Mary Wollstonecraft, philosopher and advocate of women’s rights; best known for [|//A Vindication of the Rights of Woman//]
"I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates the behaviour." Read more at [|http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marywollst400949.html#h5VZPhBzYzQwtUHc.99]

//20th-21st Centuries//
===Hannah Arendt wrote The Banality of Evil. Her work deals with the nature of [|power], and the subjects of [|politics], [|authority], and [|totalitarianism].=== ===Simone Weil, resistance fighter, Christian mystic, also interested in the [|Greek] and [|Egyptian] [|mysteries], [|Hinduism] (especially the [|Upanishads] and the Bhagavad Gita), and [|Mahayana Buddhism].===

Video from flickspire on "The One Flaw in Women": [|http://www.flickspire.com/m/LittleeInc/OneFlawIn]

 * Caring: A Philosophy **

// developed by women who are professionals in education and psychology //
"If Everyone Cared" by Nickelback

http://vimeo.com/6216273
// From Wikipedia: // Gilligan received her B.A. //summa cum laude// in [|English literature] from [|Swarthmore College], a master's degree in [|clinical psychology] from [|Radcliffe College] , and a Ph.D. in [|social psychology] from [|Harvard University]. She began her teaching career at [|Harvard University] in 1967, receiving tenure with the [|Harvard Graduate School of Education] in 1988. Gilligan taught for two years at the [|University of Cambridge] (from 1992–1994) as the [|Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions]. In 1997, she was appointed to the //Patricia Albjerg Graham Chair in Gender #|Studies// Gilligan left Harvard in 2002 to join [|New York University] as a full professor with the __School__ of #|Education and the #|School of Law. She is currently a visiting professor with the #|University of Cambridge (Centre for Gender #|Studies)
 * Carol Gilligan **

// From Psychology website of Sweet Briar #|College: // Carol Gilligan was the first to consider gender differences in her research with the mental processes of males and females in their moral development. In general, Gilligan noted differences between girls and boys in their feelings towards caring, relationships, and #|connections with other people. More specifically Gilligan noted that girls are more concerned with care, relationships, and #|connections with other people than boys (Lefton, 2000). Thus, Gilligan hypothesized that as younger children girls are more inclined towards caring, and boys are more inclined towards __#|justice__ (Lefton, 2000). Gilligan suggests this difference is due to gender and the child’s relationship with the mother (Lefton, 2000).

Gilligan found that girls do in-fact develop moral orientations differently than boys. According to Gilligan, the central moral problem for women is the conflict between self and other. Within Gilligan’s theoretical framework for moral development in females, she provides a sequence of three levels (Belknap, 2000).

From an interview at http://www.feminist.com/resources/carol_gilligan.html

There are stereotypes of what is a girl, or a "good girl," or what is a "real boy."
== The old view, in the name of gender, splits mind from body, thoughts from emotion, self from relationships, and allocates mind, self and thought to men, body, emotion and relationship to women – it makes no sense. == == There is within us a healthy resistance to patriarchy. In other words, there is within us the grounds for a truly democratic society. Psychology has largely bought into the gender stereotypes of patriarc. == == So feminism – my definition – is one of the great liberation movements in human history – the “movement to liberate democracy from patriarchy” because it’s a movement that unites women and men, recognizing the destructive effect of patriarchy on women and men. == == The patriarchy has a much greater interest in the induction of the boy, and it only needs some women. You have a choice – you can buy in...or you can fall off the edge of the world and they don’t care what you do. == == This is something we can all do, whether we do it within ourselves, within our own homes, with our family, with our children, our grand-children, which is to listen for a certain voice, in girls, in boys and in ourselves. It is an empowered voice, and it is a voice for peace. ==

Join the healthy resistance of children. I hope you’ll take some of this encouragement to join that resistance, which means doing that work in yourself.
Video – 2.5 mins [] interview on care ethics, mentions Gilligan
 * Nell Noddings **

// From Wikipedia: // She spent seventeen years as an elementary and high school mathematics teacher and school #|administrator, before earning her PhD and beginning work as an #|academic in the fields of __#|philosophy__ of #|education, theory of #|education and [|ethics], specifically moral #|education and ethics of care. She is past president of the __#|Philosophy__ of Education Society and the John Dewey Society.

Noddings' first sole-authored book //Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education// (1984) soon after the 1982 publication of [|Carol Gilligan] ’s ground-breaking work in the ethics of care // [|In a Different Voice] //. While her work on ethics continued, with the publication of //Women and Evil// (1989), and later works on moral education, most of her later publications have been on the __#|philosophy__ of education and educational theory. Her most significant works in these areas have been //Educating for Intelligent Belief or Unbelief// (1993) and //Philosophy of Education// (1995). She has urgently pointed out that frequent testing of the sort so prevalent in today's schools can permanently destroy a child's desire to learn.

Nel Noddings draws an important distinction between natural caring and ethical caring. Noddings distinguishes between acting because "I want" and acting because "I must". When I care for someone because "I want" to care, say I hug a friend who needs hugging in an act of love, Noddings claims that I am engaged in natural caring. When I care for someone because "I must" care, say I hug an acquaintance who needs hugging in spite of my desire to escape that person's pain, according to Noddings, I am engaged in ethical caring. Ethical caring occurs when a person acts caringly out of a belief that caring is the appropriate way of relating to people. When someone acts in a caring way because that person naturally cares for another, the caring is not ethical caring. Noddings' claims that ethical caring is based on, and thus dependent on, natural caring. It is through experiencing others caring for them and naturally caring for others that people build what is called an "ethical ideal", an image of the kind of person they want to be.

[]
Brief excerpts In [|Charles Dickens]’ //Hard Times//, Thomas Gradgrind—a fictional teacher—forbids even his beloved daughter Louisa from “wondering” or indulging in fantasy. No fairy tales or fantasies for Louisa! She grows up without imagination and entirely out of touch with her own feelings. Gradgrind loved his daughter; in the virtue sense, he cared. But he could not, until it was really too late, establish a caring relation.

===In a harrowing real-life case, consider the family of the great philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Unable to make their inflexible, dictatorial father understand their hopes and longings, three of Wittgenstein’s brothers committed suicide. Wittgenstein himself admitted that although he needed love, he was unable to give it. The father cannot be held solely responsible for these multiple tragedies, but neither can he be totally absolved, nor can the society that supported conditions of lonely individualism and hierarchical obedience.===

The relational view is needed. This is hard for some American thinkers to accept because the Western tradition puts such great emphasis on individualism.
===When I care, my motive energy begins to flow toward the needs and wants of the cared-for. This does not mean that I will always approve of what the other wants, nor does it mean that I will never try to lead him or her to a better set of values, but I must take into account the feelings and desires that are actually there and respond as positively as my values and capacities allow.===

===Another reason that the relational view is difficult for some educators to accept is that people in almost all cultures have been taught to believe that “teacher knows best.” But the world is now so enormously complex that we cannot reasonably describe one model of an educated person. What we treasure as educated persons may be very different from the knowledge loved or needed by other educated persons.===

===The present insistence on more and more testing—even for young children—is largely a product of separation and lack of trust. If no adult has time to spend with a child—shared time that yields dependable and supportive evaluation—then society looks for an easy and efficient way to evaluate: test, test, and test year after year. Then fear and competition take the place of eager anticipation and shared delight in learning.===

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