Revisiting Feminist Ethical Thought: Care, Justice, and Equality in Focus
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31305/rrjiks.2025.v2.n1.026Keywords:
Feminist Ethics, Ethics of Care, Justice, Equality, Gender Justice, Moral PhilosophyAbstract
Feminist ethics challenges moral frameworks and reconstructs ethical thought via women and oppressed groups' experiences. This essay revisits feminist ethics' three fundamental tenets—equality, fairness, and caring—to assess their philosophical relevance and current applicability. Female ethics emphasizes relational responsibility, social context, and structural realities that shape morality more than classical ethics, which emphasizes abstract principles, objective reasoning, and individual agency. The paper highlights how feminist philosophers opposed patriarchal ethical ideas and proposed compassion- and relationship-based alternatives. It examines the ethics of care as represented by major feminist thinkers and how feminist rhetoric might reframe justice to address systematic inequalities and institutional oppression. The article also discusses gender justice and equality, emphasizing the necessity for statutory rights and social change to abolish gender discrimination. Feminist ethics examines the linkages of caring, justice, and equality to provide a more comprehensive moral framework for interpersonal and societal relationships. Feminist ethics offers crucial ideas for reconsidering ethical responsibility and supporting inclusive social justice in modern cultures with cultural variety, globalization, and gender inequalities. Rethinking feminist ethics is essential to developing a moral framework that values diversity, recognizes human interdependence, and promotes equality, dignity, and social change in modern society.
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