In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development

“At a time when efforts are being made to eradicate discrimination between the sexes in the search for social equality and justice, the differences between the sexes are being rediscovered in the social sciences. The discovery occurs when theories formerly considered to be sexually neutral in their scientific objectivity are found instead to reflect a consistent observational and evaluative bias. Then the presumed neutrality of science, like that of language itself, gives way to the recognition that the categories of knowledge are human constructions.”

Gilligan began writing In a Different Voice in the early ’70s, when efforts at ending discrimination against women were gaining momentum. Here she claims that science, while supposedly neutral, is actually subjective because it is dominated by men and their gendered ways of thinking and experiencing the world. As a result, these masculine approaches have been presented as “human” ones at the exclusion of women, especially regarding Separation and Attachment in Human and Moral Development.

“For boys and men, separation and individuation are critically tied to gender identity since separation from the mother is essential for the development of masculinity.”

Gilligan references Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, which privileges separation and individuation (as does Kohlberg) above relations and affinities. In addition, Freud positions the maternal (and archetypal female figure) not as the origin of life but as the locus from which to separate, setting up women, ironically, as antithetical to human development.

“While in Piaget’s account (1932) of the moral judgment of the child, girls are an aside, a curiosity to whom he devotes four brief entries in an index that omits ‘boys’ altogether because ‘the child’ is assumed to be male, in the research from which Kohlberg derives his theory, females simply do not exist.”

While Gilligan will look at research conducted by Kohlberg that does include girls, she emphasizes here the way that “human” has been associated with boys and men so tightly that girls and women are not even seen as fully human, but instead as an interesting anomaly to the male template that defines humanity. For Gilligan, Listening to Different Voices in Psychological Research is a crucial way of balancing out this male-focused bias.

“In the interviewer’s failure to imagine a response not dreamt of in Kohlberg’s moral philosophy lies the failure to hear Amy’s question and to see the logic in her response, to discern that what appears, from one perspective, to be an evasion of the dilemma signifies in other terms a recognition of the problem and a search for a more adequate solution.”

Gilligan draws attention to the relation between interviewer and research subject (Amy). Amy refuses to think of the Heinz dilemma through the framework imposed on it by Kohlberg (“Should Heinz steal the drug?”), instead thinking about the how of the dilemma and whether stealing is the best approach. Amy turns what is supposed to be an interview into a dialogue in which she attempts to feel out another way, a process that takes on its own moral dimensions.

“But the primacy of separation or connection leads to different images of self and of relationships.”

Gilligan asserts that both men and women think in terms of separation and connection. It is not an either-or scenario, then, but a spectrum, or even a X-Y axis on which thinking is charted and continues to shift. This idea will prove foundational for her advocacy for Using the Dialectic of Dialogue in ethical reasoning.

“As the eleven-year-old girl’s question of whether or not to listen to herself extends across the span of adolescence, the difficulty experienced by psychologists in listening to women is compounded by women’s difficulty in listening to themselves.”

Gilligan refers to one of Kohlberg’s research subjects, 11-year-old Amy, who attempts to approach the Heinz dilemma through a “different voice” of relationality rather than through Kohlberg’s assumed rights orientation. Amy’s different orientation is not valued by the interviewer, who constantly tries to get her to approach the dilemma through Kohlberg’s vision. This manipulation of this “different voice” happens in the larger culture, resulting in women mistrusting their voices, so that they no longer even know how to listen to themselves, which is deeply damaging.

“These disparate visions in their tension reflect the paradoxical truths of human experience—that we know ourselves as separate only insofar as we live in connection with others, and that we experience relationship only insofar as we differentiate other from self.”

Gilligan claims that the way humans come to know themselves and the world through what seem to be opposing orientations are actually in generative tension with one another: One way of knowing the world actually enables another way of knowing the world. This generative tension yields the “paradoxical truth” of human lives and spotlights the importance of Using the Dialectic of Dialogue.

“In the development of a postconventional ethical understanding, women come to see the violence inherent in inequality, while men come to see the limitations of a conception of justice blinded to the differences in human life.”

Gilligan here refers to her revised moral developmental staging, in which women’s moral development leads them to an understanding of the need for attempted equality and justice, and men come to see the need for contextual, relational thinking. The recognition of these seemingly opposed voices tempers the individual’s original orientation and is necessary for the development of higher moral thinking through Using the Dialectic of Dialogue.

“Heinz’s decision to steal is considered not in terms of the logical priority of life over property, which justifies its rightness, but rather in terms of the actual consequences that stealing would have for a man of limited means and little social power.”

Gilligan refers to 11-year-old Amy’s attempt to approach the Heinz dilemma through consideration of the effects of stealing on Heinz and his relation with his wife after the stealing itself. Amy is concerned about the harm, for both Heinz and his wife, of Heinz potentially going to prison. She thinks beyond the immediate dilemma presented for consideration to a larger consideration of the context of these lives and their day-to-day living that is indicative of her “different voice.”

“Moral dilemmas are terrible in that they entail hurt.”

Gilligan asks a group of women she is researching to define morality, and many of them do so in terms of an avoidance of hurt: Their moral thinking is grounded in the desire not to hurt. Gilligan critiques this definition of morality, however, arguing instead that any moral dilemma is a dilemma precisely because it entails hurt. Hurt is unavoidable. Thus, morality might be grounded in the desire not to hurt, but this desire must be modified by the reality that hurt is part of living. Crucially, this is not a free-for-all on the part of Gilligan—she is not arguing that therefore any and all hurt is moral, but asserting that women need to learn to consider themselves as well when morally deliberating and assessing potential hurt.

“[W]illingness to sacrifice people to truth, however, has always been the danger of a truth abstracted from life […] it is an ethics of an adulthood that has become principled at the cost of care that Erikson comes to criticize in his assessment of Gandhi’s life.”

Gilligan here refers to Erikson’s work on Gandhi. Gandhi’s powerful nonviolence orientation is arguably, and ironically, not a foundation for care regarding his own family, according to Erikson. Gilligan ultimately asserts nonviolence as the foundation for a care ethic, however. Gandhi’s nonviolence seems to be a principle out of which he acts, whereas Gilligan’s nonviolences seems to be a contextually determined form of care out of which women tend to act. These different forms of nonviolence, however, are never discussed in any detail. Gilligan here values the intellectual inheritance of Erikson’s thinking, even though she does not agree entirely with all his theories.

“The notion that virtue for women lies in self-sacrifice has complicated the course of women’s development by pitting the moral issue of goodness against the adult questions of responsibility and choice. In addition, the ethic of self-sacrifice is directly in conflict with the concept of rights that has, in this past century, supported women’s claim to a fair share of social justice.”

Gilligan places women’s developmental psychology and morality in the context of the women’s rights movement to show the difficulty in achieving rights for women, whose value was societally determined by their self-sacrifice rather than by their claims to self and, thus, human rights. This ethic of self-sacrifice contrasts with an ethic of rights, but when brought in relation to one another, an ethic of care is expanded to the one offering care, which allows for women to morally develop.

“The right to include oneself in the compass of morality of responsibility was a critical question for college women in the 1970s.”

Gilligan again positions her analysis and research within its time, following through on how traditional ideas of female “virtue” have been dangerous for women, up to the present moment of her research. One of the struggles for women in her research cohort is to consider themselves as worthy of moral consideration, reflecting gendered differences in Separation and Attachment in Human and Moral Development.

“I thought as long as I didn’t hurt anybody, everything would be fine. And I soon figured out, or eventually figured out, that things were not that simple, that you were bound to hurt people, they were bound to hurt you, and life is full of tension and conflict. People are bound to hurt each other’s feelings, intentionally, unintentionally, but just in the very way things are. So I abandoned that idea.”

This is one of the many moments in In a Different Voice when the voices of Gilligan’s research subjects are transposed onto the page, so that the reader can hear and begin to listen to these voices. Gillian interprets this moment as important in its recognition that the avoidance of hurt is impossible; this grappling with the difficult reality of this impossibility is a development in moral thinking.

“All three women have difficulty with choice and tie their difficulty to their wish not to cause hurt. Their various resolutions of this problem reveal, successively, the self-blinding nature of the opposition between selfishness and responsibility, the challenge of the concept of rights to the virtue of selflessness, and the way in which an understanding of rights transforms the understanding of care and relationships.”

Gilligan draws attention to the necessity to include oneself in any moral decision. More broadly, she redefines “selfishness” not as something negative or immoral but, rather, as necessary for responsible action: Concern for others must happen in concert with concern for self. The concept of rights insists on concern for the self and is in opposition to this dangerous, traditional notion of female selflessness and, thus, is necessary to women’s development.

“Thus morality, though seen as arising from the interplay between self and others, is reduced to an opposition between self and other.”

When the self is not considered in moral decision-making, it implicitly occupies a position in opposition to those outside the self. Rather than a relation between self and others, in which all are considered, there is ostensibly no relation at all, then, and only an opposition. It is only when the self is acknowledged and included within relations that moral relations can be formed.

“When assertion no longer seems dangerous, the concept of relationships changes from a bond of continuing dependence to a dynamic of interdependence. Then the notion of care expands from a paralyzing injunction not to hurt others to an injunction to act responsively toward self and others and thus to sustain connection.”

Women and those who think through a feminist care ethic often silence themselves when they attempt to care for others selflessly. When it is acknowledged that emotional hurt is inevitable in life, however, then women are not forced to avoid ever hurting others while they continue to hurt themselves as a result of their selfless approach. With a care ethic that includes them, women can speak safely, bringing a “different voice” to the dialogue that ensues.

“Thus changes in women’s rights change women’s moral judgments, seasoning mercy with justice by enabling women to consider it moral to care not only for others but for themselves.”

Gilligan underscores that women’s rights are the means by which women’s moral development is facilitated. Rights allow women to include themselves in an ethic of care, and make Using the Dialectic of Dialogue possible in ethical approaches.

“Male and female voices typically speak of the importance of different truths […] Since this dialogue contains the dialectic that creates the tension of human development, the silence of women in the narrative of adult development distorts the conception of its stages and sequence.”

Gilligan asserts that masculine and feminine voices exist in relation to one another. The “different voice” through which most women approach moral dilemmas, however, has been rendered silent, thus causing personal damage to women, who are told that their truths are not, in fact, truths. More broadly, however, this silencing damages everyone, as the dialectic between voices that is the essence of human development is denied.

“In focusing primarily on the differences between the accounts of women and men, my aim is to enlarge developmental understanding by including the perspectives of both of the sexes. While the judgments considered come from a small and highly educated sample, they elucidate a contrast and make it possible to recognize not only what is missing in women’s development but also what is there.”

Gilligan concedes that her research depends on a small group of highly educated people, often students within her own classes. This has been the subject of much criticism, as scholars have argued that other “different voices” may be ignored in her focus on a group that is in many ways homogeneous. Such criticism reinforces the importance of Listening to Different Voices in Psychological Research.

“Among the most pressing items on the agenda for research on adult development is the need to delineate in women’s own terms the experience of their adult life.”

Gilligan here expresses the need for women to express their own experiences in their own terms. The very experience of women’s lives has not been included in theories of Separation and Attachment in Human and Moral Development, as these experiences are sometimes not those of men, as in the case of deciding whether to have an abortion. For Gilligan, the foundation for this research must be women’s own words and stories: their “different voice.”

“[T]he underlying epistemology correspondingly shifts from the Greek ideal of knowledge as a correspondence between mind and to the Biblical conception of knowing as a process of human relationship.”

Gilligan contrasts the notion of knowledge as possession to knowing as experience, valuing the Biblical conception of knowing as something that happens in relation to other humans. Biblical stories reflect this experience of knowing, as they immerse the reader in stories about day-to-day living. As the Bible teaches by way of storytelling, so too does Gilligan think we can engage in knowing by listening to actual individual stories about lives and relations, as reflected in her research methods.

“While an ethic of justice proceeds from the premise of equality—that everyone should be treated the same—an ethic of care rests on the premise of nonviolence—that no one should be hurt.”

Gilligan explicitly defines the ethic of care as one grounded in nonviolence, though she asserts that nonviolence is impossible and must be brought in relation to other ethics. The ethic of nonviolence is mentioned earlier in regard to Erik Erikson’s Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence. Other nonviolent movements, such as Martin Luther King’s, also come to mind, raising the question of why we are not as familiar with female-led nonviolent movements.