Word: gilligans
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Those differing values inform the way women approach ethical dilemmas, argues Gilligan, who oversees Harvard's Project on the Psychology of Women and the Development of Girls. On same-sex teams in grade-school sports, she notes, when a boy is injured he is removed from the field and the game continues. Among girls, when a teammate is hurt the game stops...
...matters of justice, women are less concerned about abstract rights or wrongs and more interested in finding compromises that maintain the social contract. In her provocative 1982 book In a Different Voice, Gilligan offered an example. A boy and a girl, both 11, were asked whether a poor man should steal a drug that would save his wife's life. Yes, said the boy, because human life is worth more than property. No, said the girl, who suggested that he borrow the money or work out a payment schedule with the druggist. Her reasoning: If the man stole, he might...
Girls appear to reach another critical juncture at adolescence. Drawing on interviews with youngsters in Boston and students at public and private schools -- including the Emma Willard School in Troy, N.Y., and the Laurel School in Shaker Heights, Ohio -- Gilligan and her collaborators conclude that girls reach a psychological impasse around age 11 when they confront the conventions of a male-dominated culture. They discover that their intense awareness of intimacy is not highly prized, even though society perceives women as caring and altruistic. The dilemma, says Gilligan, is that "for girls to remain responsive to themselves, they must resist...
Presented with a choice that makes them appear either selfish or selfless, many "silence" their distinctive voice. They become less confident and more tentative in offering their opinions -- a trait that often persists into adulthood. "We start to hear the breathy voice," says Gilligan. "After a while, they speak in a way that's disconnected from how they are really feeling." Speech becomes punctuated with passive "I don't knows." Consider Anna. At age 12, the insidious words cropped up only 21 times during an interview. By age 14, they numbered...
Some critics argue that Gilligan and her colleagues overemphasize the importance of gender. "Gilligan's wrong about any sex differences in moral thought," declares Eleanor Maccoby, professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford. What the revisionist scholars are mapping, she contends, is the influence of socialization -- meaning that society expects different things from the sexes and trains them differently. Class, education or ethnic background may be more important than sex in shaping psychological growth. The new theorists are "overgenderizing," says Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, a sociologist at City University of New York. "Seeing distinctions and stereotyping are so much a part...