As is true with many professions and career fields, medicine has historically been dominated by males. They have called the shots, made the breakthroughs, and saved lives but they also have subconsciously and sometimes consciously disenfranchised many female doctors who would have contributed prodigiously to medicine otherwise. Some of the friction between male and female doctors may be the result of a fundamental difference in their ethics.
A Fundamental Ethical Difference
Moral pluralism, meaning differences of moral positions and ideas, will always exist across and within genders that is not the root of the ethical difference responsible for the friction between males and females in medical ethics. The root of the problem is a difference in their fundamental approach to ethical problems. Men seek to apply intellectual theories and abstract logic as guidance in moral dilemmas. Consequently, when male physicians are evaluating moral issues in their work, they often rely on the ethical philosophies of great thinkers such as Emmanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill and consult the four traditional, power principles of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice.
On the other hand, women analyze ethical questions based of the virtues of caring, trust, friendship, and love. Thus, female physicians emphasize care, cooperation, and relationships in their dealings with moral issues. These differences have been revealed by numerous studies completed by Harvard education professor Carol Gilligan. She termed the virtues that guide the moral choices of females the “ethics of care”. However, there are feminist theorists that assert that the “ethics of care” developed because of traditional, sexist gender roles. Regardless of what the origin of this fundamental ethical difference is, it still exists and has been divisive in the medical profession.
Why the Division?
The medical world is highly contentious and has incredibly high stakes. It is a profession where one literally has another person’s fate in their own hands. If a doctor makes the right decision, a life has been saved; but if a doctor makes one tiny mistake, a life could be lost, entire families can be devastated, and malpractice lawsuits begin.
Thus, when women began entering the medical profession in greater numbers and began to make medical decisions based on feminist ethics that were entirely different than the previous paternalistic ethics, male doctors were disconcerted by this alteration in the status quo because of the competitive environment, which weakened gender relations. Animosity built up on both sides and is still a problem today.
Reference
Gregory E. Pence, Classic Cases in Medical Ethics: Accounts of Cases That Have Shaped Medical Ethics, with Philosophical, Legal, and Historical Backgrounds. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004.
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