Rosemarie Tong is a Distinguished Professor of Health Care Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Applied and Professional Ethics at UNC Charlotte. Receiving her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Temple University in 1978, she has come to be internationally known for her contributions to feminist thought and bioethics. Dr. Tong has authored and co-edited thirteen books, including Ethics in Policy Analysis (1985), Controlling our Reproductive Destiny: A Technological and Philosophical Perspective (1994), Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (1996), Linking Visions: Feminist Bioethics, Human Rights, and the Developing World with Ann Donchin and Sue Dodds (2004), New Perspectives in Health Care Ethics: An Interdisciplinary and Crosscultural Approach (2007) and Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction (2008 3rd edition). She has also published over one hundred articles on topics related to feminist theory, reproductive and genetic technology, biomedical research, global bioethics, aging, and healthcare reform.
I found this book just by serendipitous browsing and I'm so glad I picked it up. I have read this book in what is still a pretty early stage of a somewhat in-depth self-led study of feminism (especially feminist ethics). This was perfect timing. The book is essentially a textbook, with Tong only rarely inserting commentary that is explicitly her own. She discusses a wide array of quite different approaches to ethics, distinguishing between varieties of "feminine" and "feminist" ethics. The former refers to ethics based on principles or virtues in some sense "naturally" occurring to women, and the latter approach eschewing the belief that virtues or ethical principles can naturally segregate by sex or gender without being heavily influenced by social context and conditioning.
The book is kept impressively coherent by continually referring back to a discussion early in the book about how feminine/feminist ethics build upon critiques of traditional ontology and epistemology. Feminists dispute the traditional social ontology of fully equal, autonomous, selfish actors, noting in contrast the fundamental importance of relationships, and the pervasiveness of importance relationships that are unchosen, unequal, and motivated by care rather than self-interest. Epistemologically, knowledge can't be had relying solely on the testimony of a dominant class. The different ethical approaches in the book all rely on these critiques in some way, and this helps the reader keep in mind what these approaches have in common despite the serious differences between them.
Speaking of differences, I appreciate that nearly all the criticisms of different theories come from other feminists. However, I think it would have been helpful to include a little more discussion of the responses to feminist critiques that have taken place in nonfeminist ethics.