Who is Carol Gilligan?
American psychologist Carol Gilligan was born in 1936 to a lawyer and a schoolteacher. Although her bachelor’s degree was in English literature, she went on to pursue a master’s degree in clinical psychology and a doctorate in social psychology. Gilligan began her career at Harvard in 1967, teaching alongside Erik Erikson, one of the most well known developmental psychologists. Carol Gilligan is best known for her work on moral development in girls and women. Based on interviews of women who were deciding whether to have an abortion and men who were considering fighting in the Vietnam War, Gilligan devised a theory of how women’s stages moral development differed from men’s. Her theories were published in her 1982 book, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Gilligan’s theory of moral development in women and girls consisted of three levels. In the first level, moral reasoning is based entirely around what is best for one’s self. A girl or woman in the seco
