Hidden in Plain View: Feminists Doing Engineering Ethics, Engineers Doing Feminist Ethics.
Summary of "Hidden in Plain View: Feminists Doing Engineering Ethics, Engineers Doing Feminist Ethics."
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.
Affiliation
Picker Engineering Program, Smith College, 155 Ford Hall, Northampton, MA, 01063, USA, driley@smith.edu.
Journal Details
This article was published in the following journal.
Name: Science and engineering ethics
ISSN: 1471-5546
Pages:
Links
- PubMed Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22033855
- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11948-011-9320-0
Medical and Biotech [MESH] Definitions
Vision Disparity
The difference between two images on the retina when looking at a visual stimulus. This occurs since the two retinas do not have the same view of the stimulus because of the location of our eyes. Thus the left eye does not get exactly the same view as the right eye.
Ethics Committees, Clinical
Hospital or other institutional ethics committees established to consider the ethical dimensions of patient care. Distinguish from ETHICS COMMITTEES, RESEARCH, which are established to monitor the welfare of patients or healthy volunteers participating in research studies.
Ethics Consultation
Services provided by an individual ethicist (ETHICISTS) or an ethics team or committee (ETHICS COMMITTEES, CLINICAL) to address the ethical issues involved in a specific clinical case. The central purpose is to improve the process and outcomes of patients' care by helping to identify, analyze, and resolve ethical problems.
Principle-based Ethics
An approach to ethics that focuses on theories of the importance of general principles such as respect for autonomy, beneficence/nonmaleficence, and justice.
Sanitary Engineering
A branch of engineering concerned with the design, construction, and maintenance of environmental facilities conducive to public health, such as water supply and waste disposal.
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