Feminist ethics is a diverse and growing body of philosophical work, initially based in the recognition that most canonical accounts of morality neglected, distorted, and/or trivialized women's moral perspectives while either ignoring or defending unjust power imbalances between women and men. Feminist ethicists have largely agreed that women's invisibility in canonical ethical theories—even leaving aside the overtly misogynist statements that also litter the tradition—is not only morally objectionable in and of itself, but also profoundly distorts many of the arguments and conclusions therein. Perhaps the most nearly unanimous claim of feminist ethicists has been that what passes for a human ideal in much of mainstream philosophical ethics is in fact a male or masculine ideal—and that such bias leads us into error not simply about women, but about morality itself.

In general, feminist ethicists suspect that, in ethical theory as in other...