Review
Prestigious academic, undisputed voice in the modification of the parameters of analysis of socio-moral conduct, introducing the moral contributions of women on an equal footing. Defender of the rights of oppressed groups from a pacifist position, using conflict resolution; always concerned about education and how it should be applied and transmitted without gender bias.
Justifications
- She transformed the analysis of the cataloguing of human moral development.
- Before the "ethics of justice" we find the "ethics of care", which materialises the concrete responses that concrete individuals carry out on the basis of abstract principles, giving them moral status.
- The ethics of care emphasise the maintenance of human relationships through the care of one person for another, generating emotional bonds. Such care must start with the own individual.
- Gilligan proposes that both ethical approaches should be treated equally.
- Caring for others must start with caring for oneself.
Biography
Carol Gilligan was born into a bourgeois Jewish family, her father was a lawyer and her mother a teacher. She describes herself as "a Jewish child of the Holocaust era", which made her grow up with strong moral and political convictions. Her extensive academic curriculum begins with a Bachelor of Arts in Literature with highest honours in 1958; a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters degree in Clinical Psychology from Radcliffe in 1960 and a PhD in Psychology from Harvard in 1964. Her marriage to a medical student and the three children she subsequently had did not detract her from her feminist activism, being part of an international community of women from the Campus who sought reciprocal dialogue and mutual childcare. She also maintained her involvement in the civil rights movement, and her opposition to the Vietnam War, which she materialised by refusing to hand over students' grades so that they would not lose their student status and be called to ranks. Her teaching career is equally overwhelming: Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago and Harvard, Chair in Women's Studies at Rutgers University, Professor at Cambridge University, Intern at the Bunting Institute, Senior Researcher at the Spencer Foundation and, finally, Professor at New York University.
Her name will always be associated with the clinical research that led her to question the exclusive classification of moral development on the basis of the so-called "ethics of justice", suggesting that moral positions encompassed a much broader spectrum that became known as the "ethics of care". But Gilligan is also the driving force behind projects such as the Harvard Center on Gender and Education, or the development of the listening guide method, a voice-centred relational approach to understand the human world through the study of voice and resonance. Gilligan's last intellectual stage is associated with conflict resolution through projects of peace and non-violence, perspectives that had accompanied her since her youth. The intensity of her life and intellectual activities has been recognised with various awards such as the Grawemeyer Award in Education (1992) or the Heinz Award for the Human Condition (1997), she was also recognised as one of the most influential people by the Time magazine (1996). Gilligan represents a turning point in the analysis of moral behaviour in the 20th century.
Works
Spanish
- (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women's development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- (1989). Mapping the moral domain: a contribution of women's thinking to psychological theory and education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- (2002). The birth of pleasure. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
- (2008). Kyra: a novel. New York: Random House.
- Gilligan, Carol and Richards, David A.J. (2009). The deepening darkness: patriarchy, resistance, & democracy's future. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University.
- (2011). Joining the resistance. Cambridge, Malden (United Kingdom), Massachusetts: Polity Press.
- Gilligan, Carol, Hochschild, Arlie and Tronto, Joan (2013). Contre l'indifférence des privilégiés: à quoi sert le care. (In French). Paris: Payot.
Bibliography
- Moreno, Rebeca (coord.) (2019). Feminismos. La historia. Madrid: Akal.
- García Calvente, Mª del Mar (2019). “Carol Gilligan y la ética del cuidado”. First General Day on co-education of the Nahiko programme, (retrieved on 6/1/2022), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF3W3ibfSFE
- Lambroa Colectivo Feminista (2018). “Ética del cuidado”, (retrieved on 6/1/2022), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjJ5Id8gQ-M
- Freedberger, Peter (2021). NYU School of Law, (retrieved on 6/1/2022), https://its.law.nyu.edu/facultyprofiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=profile.biography&personid=19946
- Medea, Andra (2021). “Carol Gilligan”. The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, (retrieved on 6/1/2022), https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/gilligan-carol
- WB. Anna (2018). “Carol Gilligan’s Theory of moral development”, (retrieved on 6/1/2022), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwUGEIsxIDk
- Big Think.com (2012). Carol Gilligan on Women and Moral Development”, (retrieved on 6/1/2022), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W_9MozRoKE
Didactic approach
She should be included in different subjects, such as:
- Psychology.
- Philosophy.
- Education in civic and ethical values: Self-knowledge and moral autonomy.
Documents
