In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development [Paperback]

Carol Gilligan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1993 | ISBN-10: 0674445449 | ISBN-13: 978-0674445444 | Edition: First Edition

This is the little book that started a revolution, making women's voices heard, in their own right and with their own integrity, for virtually the first time in social scientific theorizing about women. Its impact was immediate and continues to this day, in the academic world and beyond. Translated into sixteen languages, with more than 700,000 copies sold around the world, In a Different Voice has inspired new research, new educational initiatives, and political debate—and helped many women and men to see themselves and each other in a different light.

Carol Gilligan believes that psychology has persistently and systematically misunderstood women—their motives, their moral commitments, the course of their psychological growth, and their special view of what is important in life. Here she sets out to correct psychology's misperceptions and refocus its view of female personality. The result is truly a tour de force, which may well reshape much of what psychology now has to say about female experience.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Theories of moral development are not mere abstractions. They matter—to the way children are raised, to female and male self-esteem, as ammunition for personal and political attack—and that is why Carol Gilligan's book is important… [It] is consistently provocative and imaginative.
--Carol Tavris (New York Times Book Review )

Girls in our society learn early on that they are expected to behave in certain ways. In her 1982 book In a Different Voice, Carol Gilligan, a psychologist at Harvard University, wrote about the powerful messages young girls receive from those around them. Girls are expected to be compliant, quiet and introspective. They soon learn that they should suppress any open expression of aggression or even strong non-compliant feelings. They also learn…to value relationships more than rules.
--T. Berry Brazelton, M.D. (New York Times Syndicate 20000922)

It has the charge of a revelation… [Gilligan] flips old prejudices against women on their ears. She reframes qualities regarded as women's weaknesses and shows them to be human strengths. It is impossible to consider [her] ideas without having your estimation of women rise.
--Amy Gross (Vogue )

Gilligan's book is feminism at its best… Her thesis is rooted not only in research but in common sense… Theories of human development are never more limited or limiting than when their bias is invisible, and Gilligan's book performs the vital service of illuminating one of the deepest biases of all.
--Alfie Kohn (Boston Globe )

A profound and profoundly important book. It poses a challenge to psychology… But it may be just what we need to revitalize our field and bring it into a more meaningful alignment with reality.
--Elizabeth Douvan (Contemporary Psychology )

To those of us searching for a better understanding of the way men and women think and the different values we bring to public problems and to our private lives, [this book] is of enormous importance.
--Judy Mann (Washington Post )

An important and original contribution to the understanding of human moral development in both men and women. Carol Gilligan writes with literary grace and a real sensitivity to the women she interviewed… Her book has important implications for philosophical as well as psychological theory.
--Lawrence Kohlberg

About the Author

Carol Gilligan is University Professor at the New York University School of Law.

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; First Edition edition (July 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674445449
• ISBN-13: 978-0674445444
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #90,679 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #42 in Books > Medical Books > Psychology > Developmental Psychology
  • #100 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Women's Studies > Feminist Theory

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 65 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Good starting point for learning about women's psychology February 4, 2004

By Cindy L.

Format:Paperback

Originally published in 1982, this book was in its 33rd printing when it was reissued in 1993. It describes the developmental differences between men and women and what that means. Harvard professor Carol Gilligan explains that male development has typically focused on separation, individuation, logic, and hierarchy. Female development, on the other hand, has emphasized attachment, relationship, connection, and communication. I had several "ahas!" while reading this book for the first time in 2003. While I've always discounted some of Sigmund Freud's work, it had never occurred to me that much of traditional psychological theory, including the work of Jean Piaget, Erik Erickson, and Lawrence Kohlberg, has also been based on observations of men, then applied to women. As a result of comparisons to male norms that don't fit their own experience, women have often felt discounted and inferior, rather than simply different. It made sense to me that these comparisons and significant developmental differences often result in women feeling selfish and guilty when focusing on their own needs, rather than those of others. It also fit my experience that men and women tend to respond differently to attachment and separation issues. According to Gilligan, men see danger more often in intimacy than in achievement, while women sense more danger in impersonal and competitive situations. Gilligan's observations have generated quite a bit of controversy over the years (as indicated by some of the previous reviews on this list!), but ring true for many women (including me), and have been used as a stepping stone for the work of many later authors.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A Good Start that Needs Finishing December 7, 1998

By [e-mail]

Format:Paperback

This book challenges the traditional male dominated paradigm of moral and personal development. The hypothesis is interesting and worthy of consideration-- that instead of seeing women as inferior to men on the scales that men develop, we should learn to listen to the voices of women after they have been liberated to speak for themselves. Instead of insisting on individuation and impersonal moral principles, we need to see that maturing women will weave a morality based on the continuing texture of relationships and the ethics of caring.

The only major flaw I see in her analysis is the insufficient empirical study base. The vast majority of her findings appear to come from interviews of 29 women, hardly a cross section of women facing the issues of moral dilemmas (in this case, the abortion decision). It may turn out that her findings resonate within the larger society, but based on the research presented in this book, it lacks the empirical strength that is required of the kinds of generalizations she is making. She admits such in the fourth chapter.

Additionally, at first she seems to want to replace the Kohlberg taxonomy, yet the one she offers is not so much a replacement as it is a revision by addition.

Nonetheless, the book is valuable for the questions it poses, and should be read.

55 of 72 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A post-modern paradigm - and an ancient one as well December 4, 1999

By "padrighean"

Format:Paperback

Carol Gilligan's work has the great virtue of asking the basic question - is Revealed Wisdom about ethical decision making bias free? She demonstrates that it is not. Interestingly, Stephen Covey agrees with her, something which has been overlooked by other reviewers of this book. Her final summation is that placing relationships to the larger human community over deontological abstractions about justice constitutes a higher level of ethical decision making. The book has garnered much attention as a female challenge to male constructions of ethical decision making. This is simplistic. Gilligan does indeed point out that, as Kihlberg postulated, women may be more likely than men to make ethical decisions based on responsibilites to others rather than on abstractions. She questions the validity of Kohlberg's conclusion that this is a lower level of ethical reasoning, and she questions this not on the basis of gender but on the basis of logic and ethics. (Kohlberg, by the way, never explains why he believes that justice as abstraction represents a higher level of ethical decision making than justice in context of community.) There are many cultures which hold that the highest level of ethical decision making incorporates responsibility to others. Unfortunately, neither Kohlberg nor Gilligan is an anthropologist -- nor are they ethicists. They are both psychologists and thus limited in their framework. This is not a gender issue; this is a survival issue for the human race! Stephen Covey, in his various 7 Habits of Highly Effective People comes to much the same conclusion, without discussing gender.