James Sterba Take and Solution to Male Bias on Traditional Ethics
By: Julia Duanetto
Tags: Philosophy, Ethics, Bias

James P. Sterba argues that male bias is shown in traditional ethics in the practical inadequacy of three different areas: (1) theories of justice, (2) its public/private distinction and (3) ideas of the morally good person. I will be discussing the practical inadequacy of the traditional ideas of a morally good person and evaluate the solution that Sterba proposes.

Traditional ethics has failed to fittingly take into account women’s interest when defining its ideal of a morally good person, each theory of justice has one of its own. For the Kantian ethics mentioned in Sterba’s essay, developed by John Rawls, a morally good person is who abides by the principles chosen in his original position. For Utilitarian ethics, a morally good person is a person whose actions maximize the net utility of everyone in question. For Aristotelean ethics, a morally good person is one whose action further their proper development as a human being, acting in conformity with virtues. All specifications of ideals differ somehow, but from a feminist point of view, the general problem is is that these ideas are so abstract that they are ineffective to address if the distinctive gender roles that are imposed by society to women and men are actually good ones and if we should conform to them or not.

When we think stereotypically about men and women in our society, we can come up with certain traits that can be classified as desirable or undesirable. The traits that come from that, reflect the gender role traits that we are socialized into, and which are imposed on us from a very young age. Current society includes stereotypes or gender roles attributes not only with very different traits to be associated with each sex but also more negative characteristics are attributed to the female gender role, perpetuating the society’s oppression on women. Distinctive gender roles and traits have been used in ways to favor men over women, e.g: in the past, desirable traits associated with men were thought to characterize mental health, and more recently, the same traits have been used to describe successful cooperative executive. (p.73). The traditional ethics with the abstract specification of its ideals for a morally good person failing to address if we should conform to these distinctive gender roles, made the traditional ideals practically inadequate in a way biased against women. By not addressing this issue the theories are bias and continue to perpetuate the existing inequalities.

If we want to take into account women’s interests we should not keep those discriminating gender roles and traits in society anymore. They need to be replaced with an ideal which makes all truly desirable traits that can be distributed in society equally open to both men and women. The ideal of androgyny. This ideal is broader minded and a common ideal for both sexes, since it combines virtues and desirable traits traditionally associated with each sex. The ideal of androgyny should be part of the practical idealization of a morally good person whether those ideals are Kantian, Utilitarian or Aristotelian. It’s only when traditional ethics includes the ideal of androgyny within the practical idealization of a morally good person will it be practically adequate in a way that also avoids being biased against women. The ideal of androgyny is itself part of the ideal of equal opportunity since is it what makes traditional ethics adequate. The ideal of androgyny is what is required if traditional ethics is to meet the challenge of feminism adequately take women’s perspective into account.

In conclusion, the solution proposed by Sterba, which is the principle of Androgyny seems to fit in very well with the challenges that we currently face with society’s gender roles. It’s quite a structural problem that just demanded an excessive amount of repairment to become a working system without being unfair with women (how could we educate people to not be biased against women when the system that defines that is itself biased). So by completely erasing the ideas of gender role, with this ideal of androgyny, that combines the best traits traditionally associated with each sex, we seem to start off with a clean slate that holds no difference on assigning traits no matter their sex.