CAROL GILLIGAN’S THEORY OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT

(ETHICS OF CARE)

Presenter:
Pamela Jane R. Pido
Rassel Ribo

I. Carol Gilligan Theory Defined

a. states that women develop a sense of morality that's based on relationships and feelings of care
and responsibility for others.
b. states that women develop this different sense of morality as their sense of themselves unfolds.

II. Who Is Carol Gilligan?

a. Carol Gilligan was born on November 28, 1936, in New York City. She graduated from Swarthmore
College in 1958, majoring in literature. She received her Masters in clinical psychology in 1960 from
Radcliffe University and her PhD in social psychology from Harvard University in 1964. She began
teaching at Harvard in 1967, becoming a full professor there in 1986.
b. Gilligan’s primary focus was the moral development of young women. In 1970, she became a
research assistant for Lawrence Kohlberg, whose stage theory of moral development is now
well-known. Gilligan’s interest in moral development was deeply affected by her interviews with
young women contemplating abortions in the 1970s.

III. What Is Moral Development?

a. Morality is simply how you distinguish right from wrong. You may base your sense of morality on
religion, philosophy, or your standards.
b. Moral development refers to the way we advance in our understanding of our moral principles from
infancy through adulthood.

IV. Why Gilligan Disagreed With Earlier Theories

a. She criticized both Erikson’s theory of identity due to it reflecting his own life, and Kohlberg’s ideas
about moral dilemmas which mirrored hi own experiences and were ultimately biased against
women.
b. The previous work in the field of moral development had been primarily based on research with
males as subjects. Gilligan's view that the results of this research were skewed, leaving out the
factors that proved to be most important to girls and women.
c. The consensus in the field was that women were morally inferior, never reaching the advanced
stages of moral development in the theoretical models that had been presented. Gilligan refused
to believe that women are inferior. Instead, she posited, women have a different kind of morality
that wasn't being measured in previous research.
d. Her research, “In a Different Voice – Women’s Conceptions of Self and Morality”, reflected
that women’s development was set within the context of caring and relationships rather than in
compliance with an abstract set of rights or rules. (Young,1999)

V. Two Moral Voices

a. According to Gilligan, the male voice emphasizes independence (“separation”) and responsibility
for oneself,
b. The female voice emphasizes interdependence (“connection) and responsibility to others. Males
are encouraged to be active agents, females to be passive recipients.

VI. Gilligan's Stages Of The Ethics Of Care

Carol Gilligan worked closely with Kohlberg and used his stages of pre-conventional, conventional,
and post-conventional stages of moral development. However, she redefined these stages regarding how
women develop their sense of right and wrong based on their self-concept.

Gilligan noticed that when women make decisions, they aren't concerned about the rules of
behavior or justice but instead want to do the most caring thing. They're more interested in developing
connections between people than setting off differences.
 a. Preconventional
 In Gilligan's model, preconventional morality is based on the need to survive. A woman in
this moral stage is focused on meeting her own basic needs, always choosing to meet her
own needs before meeting the needs of others.
 Focus is on the needs of oneself. Here, the survival of oneself is of sole concern. The
transition to level 2 begins with the recognition of the conflict between one’s own needs
and the needs of others (i.e., what one owes to oneself vs. what one owes to others).

b. Conventional
 Conventional morality in the Gilligan theory is related to the woman's understanding that it
is good in self-sacrifice. Women in this stage get a sense of satisfaction from viewing
themselves as good when they help others meet their basic needs rather than
concentrating on their own needs.
 Focus is on the needs of others. Here, the self-adopts the traditional conception of feminine
goodness, the maternal morality of self-sacrifice, whereby the good is equated with caring
for others. Consequently, one’s own needs become devalued. The transition to level 3
begins with the recognition that the self cannot be left out, but must also be an object of
one’s caring.

c. Post-conventional
 Gilligan states that women in the post-conventional stage base their sense of morality on
several key beliefs. They no longer accept that the end justifies the means. Also, a key
component of women's post-conventional morality is the preference for nonviolence.
 To the woman in this stage, it seems that there should be a way for people to get their
needs met without hurting each other. This is important not just in caring for others but also
in caring for themselves.
 Focus is on the universal obligation of caring. Here, care is a self-chosen principle that
condemns exploitation, violence, and neglect and demands active response to suffering.
Caring for oneself and others is seen as intertwined because the self and others are
recognized as interdependent. Thus, all acts of caring are seen as beneficial to both self
and others.

VII. Transitioning Between Stages

Another unique feature of the Carol Gilligan theory is that two transitions occur during the moral
development of women and that both transitions are based on changes in their sense of self.

a. Girls begin in the preconventional stage, in which they're concerned with their survival. In this stage,
they're largely selfish, caring only about what meets their own needs. As the transition happens,
they begin to understand their role as one that requires them to also care for others.
b. The second transition happens between the conventional and post-conventional stages. In the
conventional stage, they're concerned with being good. As they transition into the post-conventional
stage, though, their concern shifts so that eventually they become more focused on what is true.
Their behavior then changes from doing what's needed to survive and help others survive to doing
what seems morally true for them.

VIII. The Changing Sense Of Self

When a girl hasn't developed beyond the preconventional stage of moral development, she has a relatively
unformed sense of self. She is the person who needs and wants what she needs and wants. As she begins
to understand herself as a good or bad person, she transitions into the second stage, the conventional
stage, or moral development.

Women in this conventional stage may see themselves as good or bad, but they always make these moral
judgments based on a sense of morality rooted society's consensus of what makes one good or bad rather
than on an understanding of some larger, universal truth.
When women transition into the post-conventional stage, they no longer judge this way. Instead, they see
themselves in light of universal truths. As women, their ethic of care is based on what helps the world overall
and in the long term.