Carol Gilligan (1936– ) is an American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist best known for her work with and against Lawrence Kohlberg on ethical community and ethical relationships, and certain subject-object problems in ethics. Feminists redirects here. ... An ethicist is one whose judgement on ethics and ethical codes has come to be trusted by some community, and (importantly) is expressed in some way that makes it possible for others to mimic or approximate that judgement. ... A psychologist is a scientist or clinician who studies psychology, the systematic investigation of the human mind, including behavior and cognition. ... Lawrence Kohlberg (October 25, 1927 – January 19, 1987) was an American psychologist. ... An ethical relationship, in most theories of ethics that employ the term, is a basic and trustworthy relationship that one has to another human being, that cannot necessarily be characterized in terms of any abstraction other than trust and common protection of each others body. ... An ethical relationship, in most theories of ethics that employ the term, is a basic and trustworthy relationship that one has to another human being, that cannot necessarily be characterized in terms of any abstraction other than trust and common protection of each others body. ... In philosophy, the subject-object problem arises out of the metaphysics of Hegel. ...

Biography

Carol Gilligan received a B.A. in English literature from Swarthmore College, a master's degree in clinical psychology from Radcliffe College and a Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University. Her landmark book In A Different Voice (1982) is described by Harvard University Press as “the little book that started a revolution.” Following In A Different Voice, she studied women’s psychology and girls’ development and co-authored or edited five books with her students Mapping the Moral Domain (1988), Making Connections (1990), Women, Girls, and Psychotherapy: Reframing Resistance (1991), Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development, (1992) – a New York Times notable book of the year, and Between Voice and Silence: Women and Girls, Race and Relationships (1995). She received a senior research scholarship award from the Spencer Foundation, a Grawemeyer Award for her contributions to education, a Heinz Award for her contributions to understanding the human condition and was named by Time Magazine as one of the 25 most influential Americans. Following her research on girls’ development, she studied boys and their parents in relationships. The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, Salman Rushdie is Indian, V.S... Swarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,450 students. ... The Greek letter Psi is often used as a symbol of psychology. ... Radcliffe College was a liberal arts womens college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, closely associated with Harvard University. ... The scope of social psychological research. ... Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ... The Harvard University Press is a publishing house, a division of Harvard University, that is highly respected in academic publishing. ... The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ... The Grawemeyer Award is a prestigious and lucrative award presented each year by the University of Louisville in the state of Kentucky, United States. ... (Clockwise from upper left) Time magazine covers from May 7, 1945; July 25, 1969; December 31, 1999; September 14, 2001; and April 21, 2003. ...

She was a member of the Harvard faculty for more than thirty years and, in 1997, became Harvard’s first professor of Gender Studies. In 1992, she was Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at the University of Cambridge, in 2002, she became University Professor at New York University. She is now a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge, affiliated with the Centre for Gender Studies and with Jesus College. Gender studies is a theoretical work in the social sciences or humanities that focuses on issues of sex and gender in language and society, and often addresses related issues including racial and ethnic oppression, postcolonial societies, and globalization. ... The University of Cambridge (often Cambridge University), located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and has a reputation as one of the worlds most prestigious universities. ... New York University (NYU) is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational research university in New York City. ... College name The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge Named after The Virgin Mary Saint John the Evangelist Saint Radegund Jesus Lane and Jesus Parish Established 1496 Location Jesus Lane Admittance Men and women Master Prof. ...

She is married to James Gilligan, M.D., who directed the Center for the Study of Violence at Harvard Medical School. He is the former Medical director of the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane and was director of mental health for the Massachusetts prison system. They have three adult sons.^[1][2]

In a Different Voice

Her fame rests primarily on In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (1982) in which she criticized Kohlberg's research on the moral development of children, which at the time showed that girls on average reached a lower level of moral development than boys did. Gilligan pointed out that the participants in Kohlberg's basic study were largely male, and that the scoring method Kohlberg used tended to favor a principled way of reasoning that was more common to boys, over a moral argumentation concentrating on relations, which would be more amenable to girls. Kohlberg saw reason to revise his scoring methods as a result of Gilligan's critique, after which boys and girls scored evenly. A major contribution to theories of moral development and gender studies, In a Different Voice by Carol Gilligan presents a critique to the prevailing understanding of womens psychosocial development, especially in reference to Kohlbergs stages of moral development. ...

Her work formed the basis for what has become known as the ethics of care, a theory of ethics that contrasts ethics of care to so-called ethics of justice. The ethics of care movement is a movement in twentieth century normative ethical theory that is largely inspired by the work of psychologist Carol Gilligan. ...

Criticism

She has been popularly acclaimed, but criticized as to the soundness of her psychological studies. In particular, Christina Hoff Sommers, in her book The War Against Boys notes that the In a Different Voice studies did not follow standard research protocol. Gilligan used small samples, her findings were not peer reviewed, and decades later, Gilligan has continued to resist letting other researchers see her data. Tufts University professor Zella Luria commented on the studies by saying, "One is left with the knowledge that there were some studies involving women and sometimes men and that women were somehow sampled and somehow interviewed on some issues.... Somehow the data were sifted and somehow yielded a clear impression that women could be powerfully characterized as caring and interrelated. This is an exceedingly intriguing proposal, but it is not yet substantiated as a research conclusion." Image File history File links Unbalanced_scales. ... It has been suggested that Equity feminism be merged into this article or section. ... Christina Hoff Sommers (born 1956) is an American author who researches culture, adolescents, and morality in American society. ... A sample is that part of a population which is actually observed. ... Peer review (known as refereeing in some academic fields) is a scholarly process used in the publication of manuscripts and in the awarding of funding for research. ... Tufts University is a private research university in Medford/Somerville, Massachusetts, suburbs of Boston. ...

Responses to this criticism argue that small sample sizes and non-replicable results are standard critiques of qualitative, interview-based research. In social science, such a method has often been used to inductively generate theories which can later be deductively tested.^{[citation needed]} For example, Sigmund Freud's work was based on small sample sizes and nonreplicable results. However, little of Freud's work is considered to have validity today, either. Sigmund Freud (IPA: ), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939), was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. ...

In her article "Power, Science and Resistance", the feminist writer and psychologist Naomi Weisstein - who considered Freud's conclusions to have been driven by his presuppositions rather than his research - argued that Gilligan's work merely emulates the sexist essentialism of 1960's psychology that sought to present women as irrational and child-like creatures. In her analysis, men had previously utilized the discourse of psychology to present their pre-formed sexist opinions about the female character as 'findings' through a similar method to that used by Gilligan. These 'findings' were then used to deter women from education and to bind them within the reproductive inner-space of the household. Although Gilligan sought to nuance her findings by claiming that the gender difference she constructed arises out of the socialization process rather than biology, Weisstein considers her work to reflect the same essentialist reasoning. Naomi Weisstein (1939-) is the daughter of Mary Wenk and Samuel Weisstein. ... In philosophy, essentialism is the view, that, for any specific kind of entity it is at least theoretically possible to specify a finite list of characteristics —all of which any entity must have to belong to the group defined. ... A family posing for a group photo socializes together. ...

This supports the view that the popularity of the Ethics of Care thesis does not arise out of respect for its methodological rigour, but rather because it can be used to support a particular political worldview. Sara Ruddick drew upon Gilligan's hypothesis to support her belief that a female capacity for 'maternal thinking' could be harnessed as the foundation for a form of politics that is less conflictual and ultimately more benign than what she perceives as the present patriarchal structure. Critics believe that this serves to illustrate the intense political implications of placing characteristics within genders boundaries - no matter what caveats are then added - in the manner that Gilligan set out to do.

See also

• Kohlberg's stages of moral development
• Mental Illness and Gender
• Ethics of care

Kohlbergs stages of moral development are planes of moral adequacy conceived by Lawrence Kohlberg to explain the development of moral reasoning. ... Gender is a determinant of mental health and mental illness. ... The ethics of care movement is a movement in twentieth century normative ethical theory that is largely inspired by the work of psychologist Carol Gilligan. ...

References

External links

• Biography of Gilligan at Webster University