Feminists have over time developed a wide variety of approaches to ethics, including those labelled "feminine," "maternal," and "lesbian." Each of these approaches highlights the differences between men and women's situations. Together the overall aim of all feminist approaches to ethics, irrespective of their specific labels, is to create gender-equal ethics, a moral theory that generates non-sexist moral principles, policies, and practices. This essay will attempt to discuss aspects of our present postmodern situation and the significant part they have played in changing both our understanding and approach to feminism. The dramatic changes in our overall approach to ethics, especially concerning Christian ethics have mostly come in the last hundred years.
Feminist approaches to ethics are not contemporary developments. A variety of eighteenth and nineteenth-century thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Catherine Beecher, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton all discussed "women's morality. …
