Feminist ethics has developed in response to feminist attention to androcentric and sexist limitations of traditional Western ethics.

Broadly speaking, the perspectives advanced by feminist ethics may have implications for the understanding of professional ethics in science and engineering, and in such science and technology related areas of applied ethics as biomedical, environmental, or computer ethics. In the sciences and technologies themselves, feminist ethics may have more direct impact on the theoretical structures of some disciplines (such as anthropology and psychology) than others (such as physics and chemistry).

Feminist critiques have focused on three interrelated concerns. First, that women's moral capacities frequently have been seen as less developed than those of men. Second, that accounts of moral capacities have privileged traits historically identified as masculine, such as reason, autonomy, and independence, over traits identified as feminine, such as caring, community, and interconnection, and that moral theories...