(34 reviews) Author: Carol Gilligan ISBN : 9780674445444 New from $5.75 Format: PDFThis 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 700,000 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.
- Paperback: 216 pages
- Publisher: Harvard University Press; First Edition edition (July 1, 1993)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0674445449
- ISBN-13: 978-0674445444
- Product Dimensions: 0.5 x 5.5 x 8.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development PDF
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.
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