This is the little book that started a revolution, making women's voices heard, in their own right and with their own integrity, for virtually the first time in social scientific theorizing about women. Its impact was immediate and continues to this day, in the academic world and beyond. Translated into sixteen languages, with more than three-quarters of a million copies sold around the world, In a Different Voice has inspired new research, new educational initiatives, and political debate--and helped many women and men to see themselves and each other in a different light.

Carol Gilligan believes that psychology has persistently and systematically misunderstood women--their motives, their moral commitments, the course of their psychological growth, and their special view of what is important in life. Here she sets out to correct psychology's misperceptions and refocus its view of female personality. The result is truly a tour de force, which may well reshape much of what psychology now has to say about female experience.

The only major flaw I see in her analysis is the insufficient empirical study base. The vast majority of her findings appear to come from interviews of 29 women, hardly a cross section of women facing the issues of moral dilemmas (in this case, the abortion decision). It may turn out that her findings resonate within the larger society, but based on the research presented in this book, it lacks the empirical strength that is required of the kinds of generalizations she is making. She admits such in the fourth chapter.

Additionally, at first she seems to want to replace the Kohlberg taxonomy, yet the one she offers is not so much a replacement as it is a revision by addition.

Nonetheless, the book is valuable for the questions it poses, and should be read.

52 of 68 found the following review helpful:


A post-modern paradigm - and an ancient one as well  Dec 04, 1999
Carol Gilligan's work has the great virtue of asking the basic question - is Revealed Wisdom about ethical decision making bias free? She demonstrates that it is not. Interestingly, Stephen Covey agrees with her, something which has been overlooked by other reviewers of this book. Her final summation is that placing relationships to the larger human community over deontological abstractions about justice constitutes a higher level of ethical decision making. The book has garnered much attention as a female challenge to male constructions of ethical decision making. This is simplistic. Gilligan does indeed point out that, as Kihlberg postulated, women may be more likely than men to make ethical decisions based on responsibilites to others rather than on abstractions. She questions the validity of Kohlberg's conclusion that this is a lower level of ethical reasoning, and she questions this not on the basis of gender but on the basis of logic and ethics. (Kohlberg, by the way, never explains why he believes that justice as abstraction represents a higher level of ethical decision making than justice in context of community.) There are many cultures which hold that the highest level of ethical decision making incorporates responsibility to others. Unfortunately, neither Kohlberg nor Gilligan is an anthropologist -- nor are they ethicists. They are both psychologists and thus limited in their framework. This is not a gender issue; this is a survival issue for the human race! Stephen Covey, in his various 7 Habits of Highly Effective People comes to much the same conclusion, without discussing gender.

26 of 35 found the following review helpful:


interesting but poorly substantiated  Apr 23, 2001 By bob
Any work that cliams to make sweeping findings on gender and perspective that are based on samples using as few subjects as those reported in this book must be taken with a grain of salt. The writer uses tiny samples and makes broad generalizations on the basis of them. What is even more distturbing is that I have seen her work cited by other writers as a conclusive source. Furthur, the subjects presented in this work do not respond to the ethical problems presented to them, but rather seek to change the conditions of those problems. In given a situation where one's loved one is ill and he does not have the money to buy the medicine without which she will die he must chose if he will steal the medicine. The subjects in this study seek to change the conditions of the test; well, gee, if the person with the medicine REALLY understood how sick she was maybe he would give it or perhaps a fundraiser could be held. If these were viable options than there would be no ethicial problem. Eventually, one must face the black and white choice. I would assume that some men also thought of these possibilities but, given the conditions of the test, understood that they were not options ( perhaps already having been attempted). The responses that Gilligan relies on in her study seem to say nothing about how to respond to ethical challenges as much as how to avoid them or put them off as long as possible. Had she attacked the validity of the test as unrealistic, biased, whatever, perhaps her work would have had more impact. On the other hand, I belive that Gilligan is fairly accurate in her analysis of the way that men and woman differ in their approach to many things. It is unfortunate that she based her conclusions upon evidence so weak as to amount to none. I have great respect for woman and to not denigrate the way that they look at the world, however, I think that an analysis of them on such paltry evidence weakens her argument and that of all those who came after that use her as a source. overall, I think that she reaches a conclusion that is probably not far off the mark but built upon a weak foundation. I hope that those that derive their work from her's find another source before they are called into question.

17 of 24 found the following review helpful:


Profound, but limited samples  Jun 12, 2001 By Leon M. Bodevin "Do right and fear no man"
Most of this book struck me as profound, even wise. Gilligan's thesis that men develop their independence before women and that women are more attune to their relationships (and hence develop a sense of self much later than men) makes a lot of sense to me. It rings true for many of the women and men I know. One very big critique though. Many have hailed this as a modern masterpiece, which in most respects it is. But I was struck by the tiny samples on which Gilligan builds her theories. In most cases she only sampled a couple dozen people, a paltry number by any standard for a book that professes to inform readers about the differences between men and women. Other than that though, I loved this book and I highly recommend it. I also recommend Howard Gardner's Extraordinary Minds.

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