In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. - book reviews

Reason, Dec, 1993 by Cathy Young

No book since The Feminine Mystique has had a greater impact on contemporary American feminism than Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Harvard University Press, 1982). A Harvard psychology professor, Gilligan challenges the "masculine bias" of theories that stress the development of an autonomous self as a prerequisite to mature intimacy.

Psychologists such as Erik Erickson, Gilligan complains, acknowledged that psychological development was different for the young woman (who must "attract the man...by whose status she will be defined" and for whom, therefore, self is defined through relationships) yet canonized the "male" process of individuation as the norm, disregarding values rooted in female experience. Through interviews with male and female children and young adults, she seeks to demonstrate that whereas men base their moral judgments on individual rights and abstract principles of right and wrong, women's moral understanding is "contextual," emphasizing human needs, empathy, and interdependence.

Many feminists were disturbed by Gilligan's apparent validation of sex stereotypes and traditional feminine virtues, yet she was championed by such prominent female commentators as Ellen Goodman, and Ms. put her on the cover as Woman of the Year in January 1984. Although, in contrast to legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, Gilligan sees women as moral agents rather than passive victims of patriarchy, her brand of feminism opens the way to fresh charges of male oppression: Institutions are sexist not only if they exclude women but if they include them on "male" terms (expecting them to be as competitive and individualistic as men) and fail to incorporate "female" values. In the past decade, Gilligan's influence has surfaced in educational theories that call for more cooperative, intuitive learning styles attuned to "women's ways of knowing," in claims of women's distinct "caring" political agenda (more social programs), and in feminist jurisprudence, which derides individual rights and objective rules as male fixations.

To a degree, Gilligan corrects the oversights of earlier feminists who seemed to think that liberated women would just assume male roles and life would go on as if the traditionally female nurturing tasks weren't even needed. Yet she is especially irked by the view (espoused by some of the male psychologists she takes on) that "female" moral judgments are appropriate primarily in the personal sphere. While In a Different Voice steers clear of explicit politics, Gilligan's assertion that "male" ethics are based on the obligation not to hurt others and "female" ethics on the obligation to help others ("a morality of rights and non-interference may appear frightening to women in its potential justification of indifference and unconcern") engenders a nagging suspicion that "female values" may be a code word for socialism.

Gilligan's methods and conclusions have been challenged by a number of social scientists and writers, including feminists Susan Faludi and Katha Pollitt. The most thoughtful critiques can be found in A Fearful Freedom: Women's Flight From Equality, by Wendy Kaminer (Addison-Wesley, 1990), which shows the dangers of constructing legal norms based on the presumption that women are more nurturing and "connected" than men, and The Mismeasure of Woman, by Carol

Tavris (Simon & Schuster, 1992). Tavris argues that Gilligan tends to absolutize often small statistical differences between the sexes, minimizing the female desire for autonomy and the male desire for intimacy.

Indeed, reading In a Different Voice, one often feels that Gilligan is arbitrarily interpreting the subjects' statements to fit her theory of sex differences. Responding to the hypothetical dilemma of Heinz, whose dying wife needs a drug that he can't afford and for which the druggist won't reduce the price, a male subject says Heinz is justified in stealing the drug because "human life is worth more than money," while a female subject says he should steal the drug because his wife "is another human being who needs help." In Gilligan's view, the male response appeals to an abstract hierarchy of priorities and the female response to an actual person's needs; yet aren't both really saying the same thing?

Recent studies have offered at best slim support for Gilligan's findings, showing that male and female college students, at least, are much more alike than they are different in balancing intimacy and autonomy. In politics, Bill Clinton is far closer to Gilligan's "female" model than is Margaret Thatcher. Generally, Tavris's conclusion that both men and women sometimes act in "feminine" ways (when caring for a sick relative) and sometimes in "masculine" ways (when competing for a promotion) seems to be solidly grounded in common sense. Yet, at least in academic feminism, the Gilligan model--often framed in terms of much more absolute gender division that Gilligan herself proposed--reigns supreme.