DeWaal notes the following:

If personal reputations varied from day to day, there would be little reason to adhere to social norms. Why not pay lip service to the rules in public but break them whenever convenient? Yet the system does not work this way. Reputations are durable and incredibly fragile: built up over many years, they can be destroyed by a single faux pas. The television evangelist who slept with a secretary is history, as is the political candidate who cheated on his taxes. And imagine the situation of our ancestors, who undoubtedly belonged to the same small community for most of their lives: virtually everything there was to know about them must have been known by virtually everyone.

In order to become a respected member of the community, we need to be almost blindly consistent. To resist every little temptation to stray from the chosen path, we need to believe steadfastly in right and wrong. Only a firm moral conviction ensures behavior that contributes to a lasting reputation of honesty. Indeed, most people reach a point at which the values imbued by society combined with their personal experiences crystallize into a stable pattern of thought and behavior from which they cannot deviate without great personal discomfort. Instead of being led by the reactions of others, or responding to immediate situations, to stay on course they rely on an internal compass, bolstered by strong emotions of guilt and shame.

Consider the following ideas:

Sports, with their rules and expectations, are a microcosm of society

In one study on this topic, Kay Johnston asked adolescents to suggest solutions to Aesop's fables, such as the one in which a porcupine, on a cold night, enters a cave occupied by moles. "Would you mind if I shared your home for the winter?" asks the porcupine. The moles consent, but soon come to regret their generosity; the cave is tiny, and the porcupine's quills scratch them at every turn. When they finally find the courage to ask their visitor to leave, the porcupine objects, saying "Oh, no. This place suits me very well." [SOLUTION]

This leads us to a insight that is rather dramatic. Are there differences between males and females in terms of how they create moral decisions?

....Given that nurturance is essential to raising offspring, and that in nearly two hundred million years of mammalian evolution the need to provide it has applied to each and every mother - from the tiniest mouse to the largest whale - it is no mystery why females of our own species value intimacy, care, and interpersonal commitment. These traits are visible in parenting styles (with maternal love being unconditional and paternal love being more qualified), but also, as Gilligan points out, in the approach to moral issues. Impersonal rights and wrongs are not a top priority of women, who often favor compromises that leave social connections intact.

The moral outlook of men, based on rules and authority, follows directly from a dominance orientation. Wherever men come together - in the military, in secret societies, in religious organizations, in prison, in corporations - hierarchical relations are rapidly established to create an environment in which men seem to work together best. Despite its grounding in competition, the hierarchy is essentially a tool of cooperation and social integration. Picking a fight can actually be a way for men to relate to one another, check each other out, and take a first step toward friendship. This bonding function is alien to most women, who see confrontation as causing rifts. If an open fight does break out, boys and men are more likely to make up afterward, as illustrated by Janet Lever's playground study. Similarly, a Finnish research team found that grudges among girls outlast those among boys, and Tannen reports hostile conversations followed by friendly chats among men:

To most women, conflict is a threat to connection, to be avoided at all costs. Disputes are preferably settled without direct confrontation. But to many men, conflict is the necessary means by which status is negotiated, so it is to be accepted and may even be sought, embraced, and enjoyed.

In chimpanzees, too, males are the more hierarchical sex and reconcile more readily than females. Females are relatively peaceful, yet if they do engage in open conflict the chances of subsequent repair are low. Unlike males, females avoid confrontation with individuals with whom they enjoy close ties, such as offspring and best friends, whereas they let aggression run its destructive course in case of a fight with a rival. During group formation in captivity, females have been observed to reconcile at higher rates - making peace is well within their abilities - but typically, in well-established groups, it is the males who go through frequent cycles of conflict and reconciliation, who test and confirm their hierarchy while at the same time preserving the unity required against neighboring communities.

Thus, chimpanzees and humans seem to share fundamental sex differences in their orientation toward competition, status, and the preservation of social ties. In both species, however, simple dichotomies should be treated with caution as there is a great deal of plasticity. With the exception of nursing, males are capable of every behavior typical of females, and vice versa. In chimpanzees, for example, males have been known to adopt and care for orphaned juveniles, and females have been known to intimidate others by means of charging displays as impressive as those of males. It all depends on the circumstances. Most of the time, sex differences follow a specific recognizable pattern; yet in an environment that requires different responses, both sexes can and will adjust.

Similarly, in modern society we see households run by single fathers and we see women working their way to the top. It is this culture dependency of sex differences that has lured feminist scholars and social scientists - at least for a time - into thinking that biology is irrelevant, as if the manifest influence of one factor would in any way preclude the influence of another.

Mindful of these complexities, Gilligan softens her position toward the end of her book, arguing that with increasing maturity both sexes move away from the extremes. Women move from the absolute of care, initially defined as not hurting others, to the inclusion of principles of equality and individual rights. Men begin to realize that there are no absolute truths, and that not all people have equal needs. The result is a more qualified judgment and an ethic of generosity. The intertwining of these strands of morality into a single basket is partly a product of men and women learning from each other that there are different angles from which problems can be tackled, and that morality can be reduced neither to a book of rules nor to pure warmth and sympathy.

Now lets look at how humans actually practice egalitarianism....