In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development

Carol Gilligan is an American developmental psychologist. Born in New York City in 1936, Gilligan has a BA in English (1958) and a PhD in social psychology (1964). She was a research assistant of both Erik Erikson and Lawrence Kohlberg, both renowned developmental psychologists, while teaching at Harvard.

Gilligan became interested in Kohlberg’s work on the moral development of children, which only considered boys as subjects. Kohlberg was not necessarily trying to exclude girls from his research; rather, he assumed that the full human spectrum could be represented by boys. Gilligan, however, decided that it was necessary to do similar research, with women, who had largely been ignored by Kohlberg and other developmental psychologists.

Gilligan notices that women often score lower than men on Kohlberg’s moral developmental scale. Gilligan insists that women are not inferior to men, but that they approach moral decision making differently, as they are focused on connection rather than separation and think through an ethic of care rather than an ethic of justice. Gilligan creates her own theory of moral development for women, noting that human developmental stages have been skewed toward traditionally masculine approaches.

This work involved yearslong studies of women, interviewing them at various points over the span of several years.