Vol. XXXVIII / 1 - Studia Moralia

THE INJUSTICE OF JUSTICE AND THE JUSTICE OF INJUSTICE 255
fulfillment of responsibilities; whereas men would be more
inclined to measure justice in terms of equity—of giving people
what they have earned and what they deserve. It is not so much
that men and women have different ways of conceiving of
morality or justice, but rather that the domains of life in which
they experience and live both morality and justice are different. 57
Margolis’ analysis of these two types of self-construct
enables us to see something else which often remains hidden.
The very emphasis upon equality which becomes a concern in
the justice categories of women is itself a response to the
injustices they regularly experience in trying to live the obligated
self in social worlds structured according to the principles of
equity and exchange. They see injustice as inequality and lack of
caring because that is the injustice that they regularly
experience. They are not afforded equal access to the same
opportunities to construct their self-images according to their
accomplishments or to receive equal social recognition on the
basis of their personal achievements. Most of them never have
access to the exchanger’s playing field, and even those few who
do make it onto the field often do not receive an equitable
treatment. Rather than being allowed to play, they are more
often relegated to the tasks of watering the field and cutting the
grass. By the same token, we might see in men’s strong emphasis
upon reasoning according to universal principles, not a thinly
disguised attempt to justify the injustices which result from the
exclusion of women, but rather the recognition of the reality of
57
Margolis points out that this perspective takes us beyond the
incomplete description provided by role theories: “But roles are different
from selves. Role theory imagines one self playing a variety of roles, some of
which have greater importance to the person. It does not recognize that the
same role, for instance, a member of a Town Committee, can demand a
variety of behaviors, emotional displays, and feelings, depending on the
image that participants have of the self that has entered the role. Women and
men enacted the role of Town Committee Member differently because
different moral orientations were expected of women and men.” D.
MARGOLIS, The Fabric of Self, p. 154. This notion of morality as revelatory of
people’s expectations is extremely important in much of the current
psychological literature, and will be dealt with in greater depth in the second
part of this series.