GILLIGAN'S THEORY OF FEMININE MORALITY
Jennifer Cole Wright
(entry in Encyclopedia of Human Development, N. J. Salkind (Ed.), SAGE Publications, 2005)
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
Carol Gilligan was born on November 28, 1936, in New York City. She graduated
from Swarthmore College in 1958, majoring in literature. She received her Masters in
clinical psychology in 1960 from Radcliffe University and her PhD in social psychology
from Harvard University in 1964. She began teaching at Harvard in 1967, becoming a
full professor there in 1986.
Gilligan's primary focus was the moral development of young women. In 1970,
she became a research assistant for Lawrence Kohlberg, whose stage theory of moral
development is now well-known. Gilligan’s interest in moral development was deeply
affected by her interviews with young women contemplating abortions in the 1970s.
Over time, Gilligan began to question Kohlberg’s methodology and the
assumptions that grounded his theory. First, the participants in his studies were all
privileged white men and boys. Gilligan felt that this biased his theory against women.
Second, Kohlberg privileged the consideration of individual rights and rules over the
consideration of the importance of caring in human relationships. Gilligan took this to
represent the privileging of a male perspective over a female perspective.
Research by Constance Holstein (1976) appeared to support Gilligan’s claim that
there is a gender-bias in Kohlberg’s theory. Holstein’s longitudinal study found that
female participants typically scored at Stage 3 of Kohlberg’s moral stages (which
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emphasizes interpersonal relationships and issues of social duty and obligation), while
male participants typically scored at Stage 4 (which emphasizes abstract issues of rights,
laws, and social contracts). According to these results, males are generally more morally
developed than females. However, Gilligan argued instead that these results show that
Kohlberg’s stages are unfairly biased in favor of the kind of moral reasoning in which
males, but not females, typically engage.
Consequently, Gilligan became one of Kohlberg’s most outspoken critics. Her
criticisms of Kohlberg’s theory were published in her 1982 book, In a Different Voice:
Psychological Theory and Women's Development, which Harvard University Press
described as “the little book that started a revolution.” Translated into 17 languages with
more than three-quarters of a million copies sold, it continues to inspire political debate,
new research, and initiatives in policy and education. In a Different Voice was followed
by several other co-authored or edited books: 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), and Between Voice and Silence: Women and Girls, Race and Relationships
(1995).
REVIEW OF KOHLBERG’S MORAL STAGES
In 1969, Kohlberg published his stage theory of moral development. He argued
that moral development occurs through a series of invariant stages, in a manner similar to
Jean Piaget’s cognitive development stages. Kohlberg’s model is not only descriptive of
how moral development occurs, but also prescriptive of how moral development should
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occur. Insofar as each stage represents a higher level of moral reasoning (i.e. a stage that
is more adequate, stable, and ‘ideal’), people should strive to attain the highest stage of
moral development.
Kohlberg identified three levels of development with six stages, two stages per
level. These were:
Level 1- Pre-conventional (Concrete Individualistic Perspective): Stages 1-2
Level 2- Conventional (Member-of-Society Perspective): Stages 3-4
Level 3- Post-conventional (Prior-to-Society Perspective): Sages 5-6
Though Kohlberg’s stages vary in what factors are salient to people engaged in
moral reasoning, each stage involves what Kohlberg called “justice reasoning”. Thus,
each stage of development revolves around how best to adjudicate interpersonal conflicts,
balance conflicting claims and competing interests, and most fairly distribute goods and
rights (the ‘benefits and burdens’ of social life).
GILLIGAN’S THEORY OF FEMININE MORALITY
Gilligan challenged Kohlberg’s claim that all moral reasoning is ‘justice
reasoning’. She argued that Kohlberg’s stage theory makes assumptions – e.g. that the
moral ideal is attained through an abstract, impersonal, individualistic ‘prior-to-society’
perspective – that do not respect the experiences of women, who prioritize interpersonal
relationships. Kohlberg’s theory thus estranges women from the process of moral
development.
Gilligan argued that women’s moral judgments necessarily include feelings of
compassion and empathy for others, as well as concern for commitments that arise out of
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relationships. Women engage in ‘care reasoning’, not ‘justice reasoning’, and thus
consider their own and other’s responsibilities to be grounded in social context and
interpersonal commitments.
Gilligan identified two ‘moral voices’ that arise from two distinct developmental
pathways. According to Gilligan, the male voice emphasizes independence (‘separation’)
and responsibility for oneself, whereas the female voice emphasizes interdependence
(‘connection’) and responsibility to others. Males are encouraged to be active agents;
females to be passive recipients. When faced with moral problems, males seek solutions
that are just and fair; females seek solutions that are caring and benevolent. For males,
moral wrongness is linked to the violation of rights and justice; for females, moral
wrongness is linked to a failure to communicate and to respond. For males, moral
interactions take place primarily at the political and legal level, in the realm of abstract
laws and social contracts; for females, moral interactions take place primarily at the level
of personal relationships, in the family and the social network of the community in which
they live.
Like Kohlberg, Gilligan identified several stages of moral development:
Level 1 – Self-Oriented
Focus is on the needs of oneself. Here, the survival of oneself is of sole concern. The
transition to level 2 begins with the recognition of the conflict between one’s own needs
and the needs of others (i.e. what one owes to oneself vs. what one owes to others).
Level 2 – Other-Oriented
Focus is on the needs of others. Here, the self adopts the traditional conception of
feminine goodness, the maternal morality of self-sacrifice, where the good is equated
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with caring for others. Consequently, one’s own needs become devalued. The transition
to level 3 begins with the recognition that the self cannot be left out, but must also be an
object of one’s caring.
Level 3 – Universal-Oriented
Focus is on the universal obligation of caring. Here, care is a self-chosen principle that
condemns exploitation, violence, and neglect and demands active response to suffering.
Caring for oneself and others is seen as intertwined because the self and other are
recognized as interdependent. Thus, all acts of caring are seen as beneficial to both self
and others.
EVIDENCE FOR GILLIGANS’ THEORY
Nona Lyons (1983) interviewed 36 people using real-life moral dilemmas.
Responses were coded as either “rights” (justice) oriented or “response” (care) oriented.
75% of female respondents displayed the “response” orientation, whereas only 14% of
male respondents displayed this orientation. On the other hand, 79% of male respondents
displayed the “rights” orientation, whereas only 25% of female respondents displayed
this orientation.
Carol Gilligan and J. Attanucci (1988) found that 65% of males used a ‘justice
only’ orientation, 32% used a ‘justice and care mixed’ orientation, and none used a ‘care
only’ orientation. In contrast, 35% of females used a ‘care only’ orientation, 35% used a
‘justice and care mixed’ orientation, and 29% used a ‘justice only’ orientation. Gilligan
and Attanucci concluded that both men and women can use justice and care orientations,
but men tend to gravitate towards a justice orientation, whereas women tend to gravitate
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towards a care orientation. They further concluded that women appear to be more willing
(or able) to use a justice orientation than men are willing (or able) to use a care
orientation.
As further evidence for her theory, Gilligan pointed to the overwhelmingly male
population of the prison systems and the preponderance of women in educational and
caretaking professions. Rhetorically, she asks: if there are no gender differences in
empathy and moral reasoning, then why are there such easily recognizable genderspecific behavioral differences?
CRITICISMS OF GILLIGAN’S THEORY
Some argue that Holstein’s study failed to provide unequivocal evidence for
gender-bias because, though some results did suggest a gender-bias, there were other
results that did not.
Indeed, Gilligan’s claim that Kohlberg’s theory is gender-biased has found little
empirical support. Lawrence Walker’s (1984) empirical meta-analysis found that gender
differences in moral reasoning stages are extremely rare: of 108 studies, only 8 showed
clear gender effects, many of which were confounded by educational levels or
occupational status. Likewise, James Rest’s (1979) meta-analysis also found that gender
effects are extremely rare. And, Walker (1989) found that most of the gender effects that
have been reported are non-significant.
Kohlberg’s response to Gilligan’s critique was to distinguish between two
different ways of thinking about morality. Morality is sometimes concerned with what it
takes for a judgment to be moral (i.e. whether or not it is impartial, universal, and
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prescriptive; whether or not it is motivated by a desire to adjudicate conflicts, and so on).
But morality is also sometimes concerned with human relationships and what they must
include to be moral (i.e. whether or not they involve adequate concern for another’s well
being; whether or not they are motivated by feelings of obligation and responsibility, and
so on). These are two ways of thinking about morality, Kohlberg argued, not two
different moralities. Consequently, he proposed a moral continuum which possesses a
justice orientation at one end and a caring orientation at the other.
REFERENCES
Gilligan, C. (1982) In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's
Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gilligan, C. & Attanucci (1988). Two moral orientations: Gender differences and
similarities. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 34, 223-237.
Holstein, C. S. (1976). Irreversible, stepwise sequence in the development of moral
judgment: A longitudinal study of males and females. Child Development, 47, 5161.
Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage and sequence: The cognitive-development approach to
socialization. In D. A. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization theory and
research (pp. 347-480). Chicago: Rand McNally.
Kohlberg, L., Levine, C., & Hewer, A. (1983). Moral stages: A current formulation and a
response to critics. In J. A. Meacham (Ed.), Contributions to human development.
(Vol. 10). Basel: Karger.
Lapsley, D. (1996). Moral Psychology. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
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Lyons, N. P. (1983). Two perspectives: On self, relationship, and morality. Harvard
Educational Review, 53, 125-145.
Rest, J. (1979). Development in judging moral issues. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Walker, L. J. (1984). Sex differences in the development of moral reasoning: A critical
review. Child Development, 55, 677-691.
Walker, L. J. (1989). A longitudinal study of moral reasoning. Child Development, 60,
157-166.
Website: Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society:
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/gilligan.html
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