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Masculine and feminine voices: Making ethical decisions in the care of the dying

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Abstract

Drawing on the example of one specific Ethics Committee, the author delineates feminine and masculine styles of ethical decision making and work with the dying as two sides of what it means to be humanistic in patient care. The author draws particularly on the work of Carol Gilligan to differentiate feminine from masculine approaches.

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Reference notes

  1. Gilligan, Carol,In A Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development, Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1982.

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  2. Ibid., p. 2 “The different voice I describe is characterized not by gender but by theme. Its association with women is an empirical observation, and it is primarily through women's voices that I trace its development ... the contrasts between male and female voices are presented here to highlight a distinction betwen two modes of thought and to focus a problem of interpretation rather than to represent a generalization about either sex.

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  3. My summary. Cf. Gilligan, pp. 24–38, for the author's more extensive treatment.

  4. Again, my summary. Cf. Gilligan, p. 38.

  5. Ibid., p. 42.

  6. Ibid., p. 19.

  7. Linda Dupre, R.N., “Bioethics Glossary,” Medical Ethics Committee Folder, El Camino Hospital, Mountain View, California.

  8. See Gilligan, pp. 151–74.

  9. Ibid., p. 167

  10. Aeschylus,The Oresteia: Aeschylus I andAeschylus II, tr. David Grene and Richard Lattimore, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953–56.

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  11. William F. Lynch, S.J.,Christ and Prometheus Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970, p. 78.

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  12. SeeThe Bhagavad-Gita, tr. Franklin Edgerton New York: Harper, 1964.

  13. See the excellent treatment of this scene and this point in John S. Dunne,The Way of All the Earth, New York: Macmillan Co., 1972 pp. 76–84.

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  14. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross,On Death and Dying, New York: Macmillan, 1969.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Human Support Development, 2278 Rita Court, 95050, Santa Clara, CA

    Daniel O. Dugan Ph.D. (Director)

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  1. Daniel O. Dugan Ph.D.
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Dugan, D.O. Masculine and feminine voices: Making ethical decisions in the care of the dying. J Med Hum 8, 129–140 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01119858

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01119858

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