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 THEORU 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