Carol Gilligan on Women and Moral Development | Big Think
Carol Gilligan on Women and Moral Development
New videos DAILY: bigth.ink/youtube
Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: bigth.ink/Edge
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Women answer moral questions from their relational understanding of others, Carol Gilligan says.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CAROL GILLIGAN:
In 2002, Carol Gilligan became University Professor at New York University, with affiliations in the School of Law, the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She is currently teaching a seminar at the Law School on Resisting Injustice and an advanced research seminar on The Listening Guide Method of Psychological Inquiry. She is a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge affiliated with the Centre for Gender Studies and with Jesus College.
She received an A.B. in English literature from Swarthmore College, a masters degree in clinical psychology from Radcliffe College and a Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University. Her landmark book In A Different Voice (1982) is described by Harvard University Press as "the little book that started a revolution." Following In A Different Voice, she initiated the Harvard Project on Women's Psychology and Girls' Development and co-authored or edited 5 books with her students.
She received a Senior Research Scholar award from the Spencer Foundation, a Grawemeyer Award for her contributions to education, a Heinz Award for her contributions to understanding the human condition and was named by Time Magazine as one of the 25 most influential Americans.
She was a member of the Harvard faculty for over 30 years and in 1997 became Harvard's first professor of Gender Studies, occupying the Patricia Albjerg Graham chair.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT:
Question: How do women differ from men when it comes to moral dilemmas?
Carol Gilligan: Well the women’s started with a simple premise, which is that we live in relationship with one another and that where essentially relational response to people so the idea of a sort of isolated individual standing alone looking up at the sky for sort of eternal principles whether they where continent principles or whatever, it was like “no-no-no look around you,” it is like you live on a trampoline and if we take, if we move it affects a whole lot of people. So, you have to be very aware of those relationships, so it was not as if women where taking the opposite, they where questioning the whole paradigm, not exquisitely, but in both impressively. I remember I was teaching a section of this class, where they where talking about moral dilemmas. If you were in a life boat, did you jump out that kind of thing. So, anyway then there was the Vietnam war was going on and college students where being drafted. In my section, we tried talked about the war and the students didn’t want to talk about it. I thought that was very interesting, particularly the men and the reason why is I realized, is that their decisions about the world would based not only on timeless principles of Just and unjust war, but how their actions would affect, people who are they love and care about their family, may be a love relationship or something and they knew that to care about relationships was to be like a women. So, they didn’t want to say it, but they also had enough integrity that they didn’t want to misrepresent themselves. So, I remember as a teaching, I moved. We read Camus novel the ‘Plague’ which as if you suddenly find yourself in the middle of the city and the Plague comes even then he didn’t weren’t responsible, what was your responsibility to other people suffer with, and I remember it was great, because we are in this long discussion of this novel ‘The Plague’ and one of the students said that is the draft dilemma and then we have really started talking about. So, I knew that these theories that represented man as thinking only in the abstract, if they where morally matured and self with why you are not reflecting men’s life either, but it was after that time of hearing women’s voices. I have to emphasize that because in that study we interviewed at street clinics in the south end of Boston and at in University Health Services, we had the most, we had a very diverse range of women’s voices...
Read the full transcript at bigthink.com/videos/carol-gil...
Пікірлер: 251
Want to get Smarter, Faster?
These sexist comments ain't it
I’m having a difficult time trying to understand what she’s talking about.
Gilligan is saying that MEN philosophize and argue about morality using rigorous arguments, while women "know" that morality can not be understood by the abstract reasoning of an isolated individual. You can not stay in your study all day and "discover" what morality is. You experience morality as obligations to others, as your relationship to them (from the viewpoint of women, according to Gilligan).
Wow as a woman raised in the 40's I understand what she is saying. It took me almost 40 years to really understand about taking care of myself. am now 77 and try to teach all Carol is saying to my grands and great grands about taking care of yourself.
Relative morality is no morality at all.
In A Different Voice is a nuanced, thoughtful book, and worth reading if you find the topic interesting. Gilligan wrote it as an intervention into a field (Psychology) that defined universals and created models of ethical development with no research into how women viewed the world. She writes in the book that her qualitative research was small-scale and preliminary, and more research was required. You don't have to agree with her her, but the amount of hate levelled at her in these comments is absurd.
I think she could do with asknowledgimg that many men sacrifice everything for their wives and kids too...but don't complain or even think to. Why? Because our expectations of any relationship are generally lower than those of women. We don't tether all our needs to it and rely on it...and maybe we focus less on it...but it doesn't make us less moral or unresponsive to moral situations. It just means we don't get hung up to the same degree with expectations.
She is wrong. There is no difference. Not that that it is a difference in thinking, rather that this thinking is gender based.
this is so nicely grounded in reality, very different from most traditional moral philosophy
# 1 Women are not a homogeneous group. #2 Heidegger criticized radical self/other dualism (Descartes' starting point), and he was not a woman. Deontology and utilitarianism are flawed, regardless of your gender!
The first book I read of Carol Gilligan's was her collaboration with Richards "The Deepening Darkness". I was agog! I had to continue and continued by reading her "Joining the Resistance", the continuance of the theme describing patriarchy in conflict with democracy. I knew I was skirting around her first book and finally realised I actually had to read it before continuing with her current books. So, I put down "Joining" and purchased a copy of this seminal book "In a Different Voice" . The book margins are now full of my annotations, both philosophical and clinical, and highlighted in several keyed colors. This book is as important to me as my encounter with Henri Laborit's "La Nouvelle Grille" and its subsequent "In Praise of Escape" (Eloge de la fuite). Gilligan has brought to the surface the liminal domain female dialogue had been relegated to. Proposing the moral theory of Ethics of Care she has valued terms and conditions of our caring actions htat both caring women and men have used. Heretofore, this conversation had been emarginated as irrational, immature and religious without hope of being represented in our justice system. And yet, justice needed care in one of the founding cases when Solomon decides that a baby has to be cut into halves in order to be 'fair' and leaves the women to deal with the official judgement. He recognised the true mother because she refused to let harm of 'justice' come to the child, which was the UNREALISTIC and only fairness that he could publically arrive at. He was sure that the unrecognised domain of LOVE would prevail and determine the true outcome of the courts. I love Gilligan's seminal book. It has helped me understand myself and the choices I have made in life more clearly. I understand my mental health clients with more clearly -informed compassion. All caring humans are speaking in this 'different' voice. All the men who were ready to break through the cultural barriers and become nurses have experienced the same anguish women have lived with when admitting they care and make it the foundation of their career. There is no justice without caring, we would not even seek justice if we did not care. Lack of care undermines justice, and politics in general.
fantastic job my friend! wonderful!
Carol Gilligan has very thought provoking material every one who desire alternative ways of seeing thinking and being should read it.
Good reminder of "the past". Wonderful update and breadth. Thank-you.
this video taught me when facing a challenge, you must think of what will benefit you in the long run-in order to take care of yourself. while looking at what society thinks is right should have no say in what you believe is better for your life.
Mrs. Gilligan I loved you in the wizard of oz! Keep up the great work
Again, I agree. But as she said, she called her book "in a DIFFERENT voice" because she said it was not necessarily an inherently female/feminine philosophy, but rather a different one (which, I believe she implied, many or most women utilized).
Very nicely explained 🤠
Anyone come back to this to discuss the concept of mask wearing from an ethics of care framework?