Newsworthy moral dilemmas: Justice, caring, and gender

Gilligan (1982) put forth a care moral orientation based on women's respons es to moral dilemmas. We tested in 2 studies Gilligan's predicted gender di fferences and the effect of dilemma content on moral orientation. We used r eal-life dilemmas consisting of the Baby M surrogate motherhood case and th e Kimberly Mays case where babies were switched at birth; these dilemmas ha d the advantage of being standardized across all participants, and of being more involving than hypothetical dilemmas. The Baby M dilemma elicited pri marily justice responses while the Kimberly Mays case elicited care respons es; yet in both these dilemmas, when compared to men, women scored higher o n care, and lower on justice. Additionally, moral orientation was related t o specific resolutions of the dilemmas. Thus both genders were flexible in their use of justice and care orientations depending on the dilemma, with g ender differences still apparent within dilemmas.