Today, 8th March 2018 is
International Women’s Day. The fundamental values underpinning Women’s Day
includes empathy among their list of 10 main values:
“Justice, Dignity, Hope, Equality, Collaboration, Tenacity, Appreciation, Respect, Empathy,
Forgiveness”
For details on each value, see: https://www.internationalwomensday.com/Values
International Women’s Day captures
the concept of empathy as being:
“EMPATHY
Seeking to understand others, caring for and valuing diversity, and appreciating difference are key to forging deep relationships to affect change. It's through the ability to understand and share the feelings of others that differing situations and perspectives can be grasped. International Women's Day calls for global understandings about the plight of women - the challenges faced, obstacles endured and changes desired for an inclusive and progressive world.”
This description echoes many
claims I have been making throughout my research on empathy. I’ve brought out the
importance of empathy for helping us gain a knowledge and understanding of
others, overcoming the apparent barrier of understand others’ minds. I see an
ethics of empathy as prior to an ethics of care because empathy is required for
carrying out a good standard of care, hence empathy is the more foundational of
the two. I have recently read an article which supports my view and includes the
psychologist Carl Rogers:
This I found exciting because
when I first wrote about empathy I didn’t know anything about Rogers on empathy
because my discipline is philosophy so he wasn’t someone I heard
mentioned. Empathy is not just putting yourself in another’s shoes it involves grasping
the thoughts as well as feeling the emotions of the other so you are “Understanding
the internal frame of reference of the other person, as well as the subjective
way of decoding events…”1. Hence, I think empathy is vital in
interpersonal relationships. However, it also has a broad application, such as
being fundamental to the way doctors should convey distressing news, known as
SPIKES, where E stands for empathy2. Psychology studies have shown
that when doctors acquire a greater capacity for empathy, their standard of
care for their patients significantly increases. Empathy is a concept that
applies to both men and women because it is a capacity that can be learnt by
either sex. So although I put forward a feminist ethics of empathy, my claims about
empathy still hold true within the realms of society in general, independently
of feminism.
Nevertheless, as can be seen by
the inclusion of empathy in International Women’s Day, empathy plays a central
role in feminism and the fight for the rights of all women around the globe. This
is one of the reasons that empathy is central to my feminist approach. I
maintain that the concept of empathy is vital for inclusivity and progress in
the world as it assists us in embracing every human being as valuable,
regardless of diversity and difference. So I like how International Women’s Day
has described empathy in a way that retains the balance of both keeping women’s
rights as a main human rights concern (not subsidiary to other rights/issues) but
without overlooking the importance of including and empathizing with women of
all identities within the women’s movement.
The theme for International Women’s
Day which starts today but continues all year round is #PressforProgress.
You can join me in pressing for
progress by going to:
2ibid
