How do people make decisions about morality?
Gilligan has found that men and women use fundamentally different approaches. And since men have dominated the discussion of moral theory, women’s perspective is often not taken seriously, and is considered to be less developed and sophisticated. Her findings are based on interviews. The male approach to morality is that individuals have certain basic rights, and that you have to respect the rights of others. So morality imposes restrictions on what you can do. The female approach to morality is that people have responsibilities towards others. So morality is an imperative to care for others. Gilligan summarizes this by saying that male morality has a justice orientation, and that female morality has a responsibilty orientation. She also outlines 3 stages in moral development. The first is a selfish stage, the second is a belief in conventional morality, and the third is post-conventional. This is a progression from selfish, to social, to principled morality. Female children start out
