In a Different Voice

work by Gilligan

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July 20, 2026

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Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice (1982) challenged existing theories of moral development by highlighting a distinct pattern in girls' and women's reasoning. While previous research, like Lawrence Kohlberg's, focused on boys and emphasized abstract principles and rights, Gilligan's work found that females often prioritized relationships, care, and responsibility for others. This perspective contributed to the development of the ethics of care, a feminist philosophical approach that views morality and decision-making through a relational and context-bound lens, contrasting with theories based on abstract principles.123

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ethics
Feminist ethics
…impetus from the publication of In a Different Voice (1982), by the American psychologist Carol Gilligan. Gilligan’s work was written in response to research by Lawrence Kohlberg, who claimed to have discovered a universal set of stages of moral development through which normal human beings pass as they mature into…
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…impetus from the publication of In a Different Voice (1982), by the American psychologist Carol Gilligan. Gilligan’s work was written in response to research by Lawrence Kohlberg, who claimed to have discovered a universal set of stages of moral development through which normal human beings pass as they mature into…
Read More