Women, Morality and Feminism
Now, I am going to deal with a sticky topic here, that intrigued me when I was studying for my Professional Ethics exam.
For a long time, the female characters in the Indian mega serials (Tamil and Hindi) have puzzled me. The general underlying trend in almost all of these serials is this : A girl/woman who wishes for the good of everyone around her, gets into a tricky situation or somebody close to her gets into trouble; However, she wants to make sure nobody gets hurt (emotionally) because of this, and so, SHE LIES or COVERS UP something. And as time goes on, she tells more and more lies to mask the initial lie, all the while ‘suffering’ alone.
Well, personally, I think most Indian serials are over-melodramatic crap. However, what is undeniable is the sheer success of these serials, in terms of both revenue and mind-share. That means people, especially women identify with these characters, especially the lead. This worried me, since from childhood, I have believed in and practiced no-nonsense, straight talk and till now, I haven’t regretted it.
One more seemingly unrelated issue I want to point out is the behaviour of female pedestrians, especially middle-aged and old women. I am sure a lot of vehicilists would vouch for this: many middle-aged or old women walk as if they are indestructible. Crossing the road, or walking on the road as if nothing will happen to them if a vehicle hits them. (I have seen a few men do this too, but I am speaking generally). This behaviour confused me as well, as these women were definitely not idiots. There must a reason why they were behaving like that.
Now, let me make it clear. I am usually not at all accommodable to gender stereotyping. And I hate the discussions on Men vs Women (I’m referring to Neeya Naana), for I believe more in individual thought process rather than social stereotypes. But issues like the ones mentioned above have always intrigued and fascinated me and I am always curious to know the reasons behind them.
So coming to the topic, I came across this Gillian’s theory of morality when I was studying for the exam. It is, in simple terms, the female version of Kohlberg’s theory of morality. Kohlberg’s theory is the description of the development of moral principles in people (both men and women; it didn’t occur to him that women needed a separate theory). The actual theory is not relevant to this post; however, the events following it are.
A number of moral surveys were done on samples of people based on the postulates of Kohlberg’s theory. These surveys mostly included some morally ambiguous situations and how he/she would react to them. And a very interesting result came up: women generally performed very poorly compared to men. The scholars interpreted this result as the confirmation of the the suspicion that women are generally morally weaker than men. They attributed this to a number of factors.
However, Carol Gilligan, a psychologist had a radically different perception. She opined that a woman’s morality is entirely different from a man’s, not inferior to. Her idea is this:
“Women have differing moral and psychological tendencies than men. Men think in terms of rules and justice and women are more inclined to think in terms of caring and relationships”
In simple terms, women don’t give a damn about rules or laws. They care about people. This attitude is not built into women artificially, but genetically passed onto them by our ancestors. Women have always been the care-givers and nurturers, and they naturally understood and respected the value of people and their feelings much more than rules and regulations.
So how does this theory explain the two issues mentioned above?
The first issue : The bitter truth is that women are far more likely to lie than men. And they are much better at it too. The simple reason being that they don’t value honesty as much as men do, if lying is going to help someone. As I said before, it all comes down to people. If they want to make someone happy, they will lie, more casually than men do.
The second issue : Now most men who cross the road would assess various factors, such as the distance from the vehicle, speed of the vehicle, nearby vehicles, the indicator on the vehicle, etc. On the other hand, women TRUST the vehicilist to adjust. Reason: women are simply more people-oriented than men.
As I said before, I am the sort of guy who believes that everything should be equal for both men and women. That’s why, this theory disturbed me a lot. Its a new insight into feminism, based on the belief that women don’t have to become like men in order to be considered equal to them.
Another point to note is the rise of individualism in modern society. Less and less people are conforming to stereotypes and are giving more importance to their own feelings. This means, the number of exceptions to these sociological theories is increasing all the time.
