Von der Tochter, die ihren Vater pflegt

Even today, home care is predominantly provided by women. The gender gap in Germany was 52.4% in 2019. Can this practice rationally be justified? From the point of view of a rationalist ethical feminism and using the example of a daughter caring for her father (cf. 1), the essay discusses three arguments (cf. 2,3,5). Firstly, it is shown that gender is not a rational reason for justifying duties (cf. 2). Against the non-gender-specific, but more convincing argument of moral value (cf. 3), the argument of supererogation (cf. 4) is brought into play, because there may be rational reasons why home care should reasonably not be duty, but morally voluntary supererogation. The penultimate section shows that home care does not deserve special moral praise per se because it is not automatically supererogation if it is not duty (cf. 5). The final section offers some further considerations for supererogation research and for our moral practice (cf. 6).