Transcript CAROL GILLIGAN - EvergreenStateCollege-Home

CAROL GILLIGAN
1936 - present
PIONEER OF GENDER
STUDIES
• Worked with Erik Erikson
• Did research with Lawrence Kohlberg
• Criticized Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral
Development
• Famous for her work in psychological
and moral development of girls
• Taught at Harvard for 30 years; was
first professor of gender studies there
Model Intervention & Prevention
Projects
• Strengthening Healthy Resistance & Courage
in Girls Programs
• Women Teaching Girls/Girls teaching Women
Retreats
• In Our Own Voices Workshops
• Harvard Project on Women’s Psychology &
Girl’s Development
MORALITY AND GENDER
• Male approach is that
individuals have basic
rights and one must
respect the rights of
others
• Morality imposes
restrictions on what
once can do
• Justice orientation
• Female approach is that
people have
responsibilities towards
others
• Morality is an
imperative to care for
others
• Responsibility
orientation
STAGES OF MORAL
DEVELOPMENT
1. Selfish Stage
2. Belief in Conventional Morality
3. Post-Conventional Stage
MORE ABOUT STAGES
• Young girls start out with a selfish
orientation; then learn to care for others
• Women learn that it is wrong to act in their
own interests; others’ interests are more
important
• Learn that it is just as wrong to ignore their
own interests as it is to ignore others’
interests; learn this through connecting with
others
In a Different Voice
• Classic groundbreaking work
• Women are different from men;
should not be studied with the same
criteria
• Criticized Freud & Kohlberg
THE IMPORTANCE OF VOICE
• To have a voice is to be human. To have
something to say is to be a person. But
speaking depends on listening and being heard;
it is an intensely relational act. By voice I
mean something like what people mean when
they speak of the core of the self. Voice is
natural and also cultural. It is composed of
breath and sound, words, rhythm, and
language. and voice is a powerful psychological
instrument and channel, connecting inner and
outer worlds. (p. xvi)
QUOTES
• The elusive mystery of women's development lies in
its recognition of the continuing importance of
attachment in the human life cycle. (p. 23)
• As we have listened for centuries to the voices of
men and the theories of development that their
experience informs, so we have come more recently
to notice not only the silence of women but the
difficulty in hearing what they say when they
speak. Yet in the different voice of women lies the
truth of an ethic of care, the tie between
relationship and responsibility, and the origins of
aggression in the failure of connection. (p. 174)
ANOTHER QUOTE
• Joining this understanding of women's psychological
development with theories of human development
which turn out to be theories about men, I have
arrived at the following working theory: that the
relational crisis which men typically experience in
early childhood occurs for women in adolescence,
that this relational crisis in boys and girls involves
a disconnection from women which is essential to
the perpetuation of patriarchal societies, and that
women's psychological development is potentially
revolutionary not only because of women's situation
but also because of girls' resistance. (p. xxiii)