Newsworthy moral dilemmas: Justice, caring, and gender

Gilligan (1982) put forth a care moral orientation based on women's responses to moral dilemmas. We tested in 2 studies Gilligan's predicted gender differences and the effect of dilemma content on moral orientation. We used real-life dilemmas consisting of the Baby M surrogate motherhood case and the Kimberly Mays case where babies were switched at birth; these dilemmas had the advantage of being standardized across all participants, and of being more involving than hypothetical dilemmas. The Baby M dilemma elicited primarily justice responses while the Kimberly Mays case elicited care responses; yet in both these dilemmas, when compared to men, women scored higher on care, and lower on justice. Additionally, moral orientation was related to specific resolutions of the dilemmas. Thus both genders were flexible in their use of justice and care orientations depending on the dilemma, with gender differences still apparent within dilemmas.