Ap psychology carol gilligan biography

Carol Gilligan

2025 Kyoto Prize Laureates

Arts and Philosophy

Thought and Ethics

1936-

University Professor, New York University

Carol Gilligan has critiqued conventional psychological theories for narrowing the model of personality development and relegating the “care” perspective—which emphasizes human relationships—to a subordinate, gendered status as a feminine moral perspective.

Another of her recent works is in developing the Listening Guide Method. In conducting a second interview between two new participants of the opposite gender, she finds similar results where the girl sees the situation less in terms of logic, but more in terms of a web of human relationships. Women must learn to tend to their own interests and to the interests of others.

In 1997, she became Patricia Albjerg Graham Chair in Gender Studies at Harvard.^[3] From 1998 until 2001, she was a Visiting Meyer Professor and later visiting professor at New York University School of Law.

Gilligan eventually left Harvard in 2002 to join New York University as a full professor with the School of Education and the School of Law.

She was also a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge in the Centre for Gender Studies^[8] from 2003 until 2009.

Gilligan is a professor of Humanities and Applied Psychology at New York University and was a visiting professor at the Centre for Gender Studies and Jesus College at the University of Cambridge until 2009.

She called this relationship-oriented reasoning the “ethic of care” and contrasted it with the “ethic of justice,” which often entails imposing universal principles or rights, even forcefully, to resolve conflict. She attended Walden School, a progressive private school on Manhattan's Upper West Side, played piano and pursued a career in modern dance during her graduate studies.

Sommers does not find it helpful for girls and women to be told that they are diminished or voiceless.

But this association is not absolute and the contrasts between male and female voices are presented here to highlight a distinction between two modes of thought and to focus on a problem of interpretation rather than to represent a generalization about either sex."^[18] Regardless of the findings Gilligan made from her study, her ethics of care and the fuel for her study have called future researchers to broaden the scope of studies and consider intersectionality more as well.

Although the two moral orientations understood the different gender's perspectives, each gender was unable to comfortably adopt the others approach.^[33]

Honorary degrees

Gilligan has received the following honorary degrees:^[34]

• Regis College, 1983
• Swarthmore College, 1985
• Haverford College, 1987
• Fitchburg State College, 1989
• Wesleyan University, 1992
• Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, 1996
• Northeastern University, 1997
• Smith College, 1999
• University of Haifa, 2006
• John Jay College, 2006
• Mount Holyoke, 2008

Selected bibliography

Books

• Gilligan, Carol (1982). In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674445444. 
• Gilligan, Carol (1989). Mapping the moral domain: a contribution of women's thinking to psychological theory and education. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674548312. https://archive.org/details/mappingmoraldoma00caro. 
• Gilligan, Carol (1990). Making connections: the relational worlds of adolescent girls at Emma Willard School. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674540415. https://archive.org/details/makingconnection00gill_0. 
• Gilligan, Carol; Brown, Lyn M. (1992). Meeting at the crossroads: women's psychology and girls' development. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674564640. https://archive.org/details/meetingatcrossro00brow. 
• Gilligan, Carol; McLean Taylor, Jill; Sullivan, Amy M. (1997). Between voice and silence: women and girls, race and relationships. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674068797. 
• Gilligan, Carol (2002). The birth of pleasure. New York: Knopf. ISBN 9780679440376. https://archive.org/details/birthofpleasure00gill. 
• Gilligan, Carol (2008). Kyra: a novel. New York: Random House. ISBN 9781400061754. https://archive.org/details/kyranovel00gill. 
• Gilligan, Carol; Richards, David A.J. (2009). The deepening darkness: patriarchy, resistance, & democracy's future. Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521898980. 
• Gilligan, Carol; Gilligan, John (2011). The Scarlet Letter. Prime Stage Theatre. 
• Gilligan, Carol; Snider, Naomi.

  Background and family life

  Carol Gilligan was raised in a Jewish family in New York City .^[2] She was the only child of a lawyer, William Friedman, and nursery school teacher, Mabel Caminez.

  Gilligan studied women's psychology and girls' development and co-authored or edited a number of texts with her students.^[8] She contributed the piece "Sisterhood Is Pleasurable: A Quiet Revolution in Psychology" to the 2003 anthology Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium, edited by Robin Morgan.^[9] She published her first novel, Kyra, in 2008.^[10][11] In 2015, Gilligan taught for a semester at New York University in Abu Dhabi.^{[citation needed]}

  Psychology

  Gilligan is known for her work with Lawrence Kohlberg on his stages of moral development as well as her criticism of his approach to the stages.

  She has been an integral part of the Harvard Project on Women's Psychology and Girls' Development that she initiated. In Gilligan's adaption, she suggested that we have inherited Pearl's world where women do not necessarily have to worry about having an "A" on their breasts.^[29]

  Theories

  In her book In a Different Voice Gilligan presented her ethics of care theory as an alternative to Lawrence Kohlberg's hierarchal and principled approach to ethics.

  As a feminist, scholar, professor and author, she has helped to form a new direction for women. The feminine voice places more emphasis on protecting interpersonal relationships and taking care of other people.