Background
Ruddick, Sara was born in 1935 in USA.
Ruddick, Sara was born in 1935 in USA.
Lecturer in Philosophy. Women’s Studies and Literature, Eugene Lang College of the New School for Social Research, New York.
Main publications
(1977) (ed. with Pamela Daniels) Working it Out. 23 Women Writers', Artists, Scientists and Scholars Write About Their Life and Work, New York: Pantheon.
(1980) ‘Maternal thinking’. Feminist Studies. 6, 2
342-67.
(1983) ‘Pacifying the forces—drafting women in the interest of peace’. Signs 8, 3: 471-89.
(1984) (ed. with Carol Ascher and Louise DeSalvo) Between Women. Biographers, Novelists, Critics, Teachers and Artists Write About Their Work on Women. Boston and London: Beacon Press.
( 1987) ‘Remarks on the sexual politics of reason’, in Eva Feder Kittay and Diana T. Meyers (eds) Women and Moral Theory, Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield.
(1989) Maternal Thinking. Towards a Politics of Peace, Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, and London: The Women's Press.
Sara Ruddick is a feminist thinker who maintains that women’s moral thinking is not only different from that of men but also superior in some respects. She does not explain this difference essentially, by attributing it to women’s biology, But rather as deriving from a structural similarity °f women’s lives, experiences, traditions and Practices. The advantages of women’s reasoning are, she holds, the preference of preserving life and an interpersonal communication, and the acceptance and appreciation of change or growth: qualities that are necessary for successful motheringHence her adoption of the term ‘maternal thinking’ for her account of structures of thinking centred on relationships striving for peace and development and based on attentiveness, responsiveness and acceptance.
For the success of this policy it is, however, necessary that men as well as women should adopt these strategies. There is, she maintains, no reason, biological or otherwise, why men should not be able to do so.
