Ethic of Care versus Ethic of Justice?

Abstract

This paper employs empirical data from Ghana to examine how gender, as a social system, generates moral dilemmas in the public sector. Female and male officials feel forced to choose private (family/social) requirements of morality over public sector ethics. The paper demonstrates that the very same gender which delineates behavioural personalities and is used to justify women’s higher ethical standards could potentially be a source of corruption, as women attempt to fulfil expectations of femaleness in the conduct of public duties. Fundamentally, the paper argues that gendered ethics -which require women and men to exude an ethic of care and an ethic of justice respectively- could perpetuate behaviours that negate public sector ethics (corrupt behaviours), but conform well to social ethics. Employing as its theoretical base, Carol Gilligan’s (1982) moral development theory, it concludes, inter alia, that injecting women into the public sector should be promoted as a right, rather than on grounds of women’s presumed superior probity. Premising women’s inclusion in the public realm on assumptions of their higher ethical standards risks being counterproductive in achieving equal representation, if such assumptions are later disconfirmed.