CAROL GILLIGAN

BIOGRAPHY

• Born on Nov. 28th 1936 in NYC
• Majored in literature
• Graduated from Swarthmore College in 1958
• Radcliffe University and received Masters in psychology in 1960
• Doctorate in social psychology from Harvard in 1964
• Started teaching at Harvard in 1967
• Professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1986

BIOGRAPHY CON'T

• 1992-1994 taught at the University of Cambridge in England
• 1997 she was appointed to head of the department of gender studies at Harvard
• Now she is coordinating the formation of the new Harvard Centre on Gender and Education

KEY ELEMENTS

• Primary focus was on females
• Interviewed young men enlisting in the Vietnam War and women thinking about having an abortion
• Started doing her research by listening to women and rethinking the meaning between self and selfishness

KEY ELEMENTS CON'T

• Formed 4 questions: who is speaking? In what body? Telling what story? In what cultural framework is the story presented?

ELEMTS CON'T

• She came to realise men think in terms of rules and justice
• Women think in terms of caring and relationships
• She made 3 stages of moral development/ethic of care: pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional

PRE-CONVENTIONAL

• Goal is individual survival
• Person only cares about themselves in order to ensure survival
• This is how everyone is as children

TRANSITION PHASE

• The person's attitude is considered selfish
• Afterwards they start to see the connection between themselves and others

CONVENTIONAL

• Self sacrifice is goodness
• Responsibility
• More care is shown towards others
• This stage is shown the most in mothers and wives
• Sometimes leads to ignoring needs of self

TRANSITION PHASE

• Tensions between responsibility of caring for others and caring for self occur

POST-CONVENTIONAL

• Principle of non-violence
• Do not hurt others or self
• Acceptance of the principle of care of self and others
• Some people never get to this last stage

LIMITATIONS TO HER THEORY

• Criticism is mainly from Christian Hoffmann Sommers
• No data for Gilligan's research
• Researchers have not been able to duplicate her work
• Samples used were too small

STRENGTHS TO HER THEORY

• It focuses on a specific gender and this helps to narrow her studies so they ca be more accurate
• Focused on her studies for over 35 years
• Comparisons between men and women are specific in the age and dilemma they were both put in
• ( abortion for women and enlisting in the war for men. )

GILLIGAN'S THEORY AND REAL LIFE

• The needs of others should not be put before your own. Example is education throughout a child's life
• Females have been known to show more interest in relationships and caring for others
• I have noticed females notice things such as how they are being treated more oftener than males.
• Also females show more emotion and tend to care more about little things such as what others think of them

Quote from Carol Gilligan
"Women must learn to tend to their own interests
and to the interests of others."