Virtue EthicsFeminist Ethics

(Biomedical Ethics) Charles Lohman

Virtue Ethics

• VIRTUE ETHICS is agent based, describing the character of a moral agent as the driving force for an ethical behavior. – In other words, VIRTUE ETHICS is concerned with

a person’s motivation for action and not with the action itself. • For example, if one performs a compassionate act, it is

because one has a compassionate character in order to act in a compassionate way.– For the virtuous person, they believe it is intrinsically good to

be compassionate, and the person’s actions reflect this belief.

Feminist Ethics

• FEMINIST ETHICS is concerned for the rights and welfare of all women.– It affirms the general rights of women to have

control of their own bodies and lives. – Now, FEMINIST ETHICS is not pro-women in the

sense that it excludes men. • Rather it involves a model of care and respect that

incorporates both women and men in order to redress the balance of power between women and men and put them on equal terms.

Feminist Ethics

• This effort of equality is a matter of brining justice to a patriarchal society and institution.– For example, in the past, women were

underrepresented in the clinical trails for heart disease, which resulted in an ignorance of the commonness of the disease in postmenopausal women.• So with these kind of inequalities, FEMINIST ETHICS

emerged to provide a correction of wrongs to women in order for women to have equality with men in medical research and in the medical field in general.