Disgusted with what's happening to my home - Planet Earth

Abstract

Carol Gilligan (1982) argues that females approach moral dilemmas via an ‘ethic of care’ as opposed to males’ abstract justice approach. My research, based on an Australian Research Council funded survey of 1000 young Australians, suggests that males and females are equally likely to value environmental preservation in terms of ‘caring’ or ‘protecting’, although there are gender differences in the deployment of other approaches or vocabularies (in particular a commitment to economic development is favoured more by young men and an inter-generational duty to preserve the environment is favoured more by young women). Furthermore, due to the weight of the individualist neoliberal discourse, young Australians are more likely to express care for the environment than for vulnerable humans.