Who is carol gilligan

I came to write about an ethics of care after listening to the ways in which people speak about experiences of moral conflict and choice that they face. My research focused on actual rather than hypothetical situations of moral conflict and choice and explored how people construct moral conflicts and choices, what they see as the moral problem or question, and how moral language comes into play in shaping the choices they consider and the actions they take.

I was impelled to write about an ethics of care by the disparities I heard between the voice of moral theories and the voices of people on the ground. How would you define ethics of care? As an ethic grounded in voice and relationships, in the importance of everyone having a voice, being listened to carefully in their own right and on their own terms and heard with respect. An ethics of care directs our attention to the need for responsiveness in relationships paying attention, listening, responding and to the costs of losing connection with oneself or with others.

Its logic is inductive, contextual, psychological, rather than deductive or mathematical. What is the most important thing you learned from the ethics of care? That morality is grounded in a psychological logic, reflecting the ways in which we experience ourselves in relation to others and that the origins of morality lie in human relationships as they give rise to concerns about injustice and carelessness.

Studying development, I realized that concerns about oppression and concerns about abandonment are built into the human life cycle, given the differential power between children and adults and the fact that care is essential for human survival. An ethics of care speaks to these concerns. Whom do you consider to be your most important teacher s in this area? The people who participated in my research along with great artists—playwrights, novelists and poets—who have enhanced our understanding of the human condition across cultures and time.

Her book "In a Different Voice" challenged the psychological notions that excluded and demeaned women and generalized research results to women that came from studies conducted only with men.

Kohlberg's results were challenged as only males were used in the research for the stages of moral development and these results were generalized to women. Gilligan's research with females shows that women are in fact capable of moral reasoning but that they use a different method than men which wasn't measured in Kohlberg's research. The implication of this theory is based on the fact that there are many important factors than justice which contributes to the development of a human being.

She was the first psychologist who considered gender differences in the moral development. She considered the difference in mental processes of men and women as a variable that effects the moral development based on the difference of genders. Carol Gilligan observed that young girls are more inclined towards love, care, affection and meaningful relationships with other humans whereas young boys are more focused on justice.

She suggested that this difference in feelings and values is due to different gender makeup and the relationship enjoyed by the person with his or her mother. She also observed that a woman has three transition phases in which she recognizes and adapts to her roles and responsibilities.