Vocational training and moral judgement: are there gender-specific traits among apprentices in commercial business?

Abstract

Since Carol Gilligan (1982) presented her conception of “two morals”, several empirical studies have been carried out to verify her assumption that the moral reasoning of men and women generally follows different principles. These research findings led to an examination of gender-specific traits in a sample of insurance apprentices. The data suggest that Gilligan’s assumption cannot be upheld although the detailed analysis of moral reasoning and the conditions of its development seem to be gender-biased. Gender differences in moral judgments should not be dealt with as a matter of the quality of moral reasoning (“different voice-hypothesis”), but rather as a matter of perceiving social role concepts in a deciding situation (“different role-hypothesis”). Thus, the intra- and interpersonal differences in moral judgment found in this study might not be explained by the internal structure of “moral competence” alone. To a certain extent they are also caused by the interaction among the social situation, the individual’s personal and moral self, and moral competence.