Carol Gilligan, “In a Different Voice:  Women’s Conceptions of Self and of Morality”   

S&F Online www.barnard.edu/sfonline Double Issue: 3.3 & 4.1

The Scholar & Feminist XXX:  Past Controversies, Present Challenges, Future Feminisms Document Archive  Reprinted from: The Future of Difference

Hester Eisenstein and Alice Jardine, Editors.  New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1985

Reading Guide and Questions 

Gilligan writes about stages of moral development in the context of educational psychology.     In part she responds to earlier researchers like Piaget and Kohlberg.   She questions whether Kohlberg's stages of moral development (for chart click here: Kohlberg's stages ) based on research with male subjects, captures an accurate picture of moral development.   Gilligan, based on her research with women, creates a differing set of stages of moral development. (See a chart here:  Gilligan's stages.) She asks how we can develop an inclusive picture of moral development for both men and women.   The essay begins rather abruptly, but Gilligan explains the subject and gives a road map of the essay on the second page.   She begins by noting previous male developmental scholars have not known what to do with women.  They have seen them as either deviant or deficient in their development.  In her third paragraph Gilligan notes that sex role stereotypes suggest a split between masculine and feminine aligned in dichotomies such as:   work versus love/care; autonomy and separateness of the individual versus connection to others/interdependence; and instrumental abilities versus expressive capacities.  The perspective that associates the masculine side with adulthood is in her view “out of balance.” (paragraph 3)   She then announces the subject of her essay: 

“This difference in point of view is the subject of this essay, which seeks to identify in the feminine experience and construction of social reality a distinctive voice, recognizable in the different perspective it brings to bear on the construction and resolution of moral problems.” (paragraph 3) 

She goes on to give a roadmap of the essay: 

First section - "repeated observation of of difference in women's concepts of self and morality" in both previous psychological descriptions and current research .   Upshot:  "The relational bias in women's thinking" previously thought  "to compromise their moral judgement and impede their development" now seen not as a deficiency but "a different social and moral understanding"   or conception. (par. 3)

Second section - The different conception is "enlarged' by interviews with women "facing the moral dilemma of whether to continue or abort a pregnancy." (par.4)   Upshot:  A sequence of women's moral development based on their own categories of thought which focuses on conflict between self and other.  This sequence retains the three-level progression social developmental theory:  egocentric, societal, universal.  Differs from Kohlberg's who used all male data. (parag.4)

Third section - The different conception a) "becomes the basis in the third section for challenging the current assessment of women's moral judgement" and b) "brings to bear a new perspective on developmental assessment in general" -- both men and women included (parag.5).  Conception of adult life affects our conception of development and including both men and women leads to "a reconsideration of the substance of social and moral development (parag. 5).

A.   Characteristics of the Feminine Voice (pages 2 -8 of the pdf). 

1.   In the section entitled Characteristics of the Feminine Voice (pages 2 -8 of the pdf) Gilligan briefly reviews the work of Piaget, Kohlberg, and Freud on moral development. (2-4)  How does she argue they construct moral development and women's deviant and arrested development. 

2.   She goes on to recount examples of women describing their own views of morality.   What "common thread' does she find (p. 5)? 

3.   Why does she find choice and responsibility as central and likely to cause crisis?  

4.   How does her review of previous developmental scholarship and of the data from women lead her to posit "two differing constructions of the moral domain" (p. 8)?

B.   The Development of Women's Moral Judgement (pages 8-29)

1.   In the section entitled The Development of Women's Moral Judgement (pages 8-29), what defects does Gilligan find in previous work? 

2.   Why does she think that dilemmas related to birth control and abortion provide particularly fruitful ground for developing a picture of women's moral development?   Do you think the focus of her research on these dilemmas skews her results in helpful or problematic ways?

3.   Why does Gilligan hold, "The conflict between self and other thus constitutes the central moral problem for women, posing a dilemma whose resolution requires a reconciliation between femininity and adulthood." (p. 10) 

4.   What are the stages she creates based on her research?  Obviously, the voices she reports are designed to illustrate her stages and vice versa. Does she seem to capture the voices of the women interviewed in her stages?  Would you have interpreted any of the voices differently?  What do you make of her notion that moral development involves embracing both femininity and adulthood?  Gilligan keeps the basic framework of egocentric, societal and universal that Kohlberg and others used.  How helpful and how problematic is this?  If she had picked a different dilemma or study cohort, would the stages have come out as they did?

C.   Developmental Theory Reconsidered (pages 29-35). In this section Gilligan writes about an ethic of care and responsibility associated with women and an ethic of rights and justice associated with men.  She associates a high level of moral development for both men and women with an integration of rights and responsibilities and an understanding of these perspectives as complementary.  She also points out the difference giving more realistic details when presenting hypothetical dilemmas makes.   Note you can find several of the dilemmas Kohlberg used including the "Heinz' dilemma (Number III) online at

http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/p109g/kohlberg.dilemmas.html  

1. How do women tend to reconstruct the Heinz dilemma at the post-conventional level?   Why is this significant in Gilligan's view?

2.   Why does Gilligan bring in Erikson's work on Gandhi and non-violence? Abraham and Isaac?  The Merchant of Venice?

3.   On the last page (page 35) Gilligan summarizes the points she has made in her essay.  How would you boil them down in about five to ten sentences?

CLASS DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1.  Overall what are the key points about moral development Gilligan makes in this essay.

2.  Describe what you see to be the greatest strength and greatest weakness of Gilligan's case in this essay.  Be sure to identify why each is a strength or weakness.  What do you see as the greatest strength and greatest weakness of her own research design?

3.  In what ways does Gilligan provide a different perspective on moral development?  In what ways does she remain wedded to previous conceptions?

4.  Gilligan seems to shift back and forth between finding a different women's voice and seeking an integrated moral voice.  What are some examples that suggest this?  Why do you think this might be the case?

5.  How might a liberal feminist and a cultural feminist each evaluate Gilligan=s ideas?

6.  How useful and effective are Gilligan's frequent references to the voices of research subjects?  to literature?

*****For an interesting discussion of Feminist Ethics which includes references to Wollstonecraft, Gilman's Herland, and Gilligan see Rosemary Tong, "Feminist Ethics" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-ethics/