Abstract
How has engineering ethics addressed gender concerns to date? How have the ideas of feminist philosophers and feminist ethicists made their way into engineering ethics? What might an explicitly feminist engineering ethics look like? This paper reviews some major themes in feminist ethics and then considers three areas in which these themes have been taken up in engineering ethics to date. First, Caroline Whitbeck’s work in engineering ethics integrates considerations from her own earlier writings and those of other feminist philosophers, but does not use the feminist label. Second, efforts to incorporate the Ethic of Care and principles of Social Justice into engineering have drawn on feminist scholarship and principles, but these commitments can be lost in translation to the broader engineering community. Third, the film Henry’s Daughters brings gender considerations into the mainstream of engineering ethics, but does not draw on feminist ethics per se; despite the best intentions in broaching a difficult subject, the film unfortunately does more harm than good when it comes to sexual harassment education. I seek not only to make the case that engineers should pay attention to feminist ethics and engineering ethicists make more use of feminist ethics traditions in the field, but also to provide some avenues for how to approach integrating feminist ethics in engineering. The literature review and analysis of the three examples point to future work for further developing what might be called feminist engineering ethics.
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Notes
While Mashburn and Martin argue that the field of feminist legal ethics is underdeveloped, the fact that they use the phrase “feminist legal ethics” in a book chapter reviewing that field demonstrates far greater development than in engineering.
This is missing despite specific suggestions I and others made at an early screening of the film at the Association of Practical and Professional Ethics meeting in March 2010.
While the study guide says Laura is 29, the voiceover in the film establishes that she is 11 years older than her sister who just graduated from college, identified in the study guide as 21.
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Acknowledgments
The author thanks participants in the DePauw Mellon workshop on Feminist Ethics, particularly Meryl Altman and Jana Sawicki for their helpful comments on drafts of this work.
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I intend the phrase “feminist engineering ethics” to represent a variety of feminist approaches to engineering ethics and engineers’ approaches to feminist ethics. Walker (1989) among others has cautioned us against singular approaches to feminist ethics that re-establish hegemonic systems of thought. Here I focus on what engineers can learn from feminist ethics rather than the converse. Though there is likely a case to be made that feminist ethicists may have something to learn from engineers, as an engineer I hesitate to speculate in any detail about these synergies until a conversation between feminist ethicists and engineers has progressed further.
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Riley, D. Hidden in Plain View: Feminists Doing Engineering Ethics, Engineers Doing Feminist Ethics. Sci Eng Ethics 19, 189–206 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-011-9320-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-011-9320-0