In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development

Gilligan is interested in psychological development in the human life cycle. Psychological developmental theorists have assumed “male life as the norm” (6), however, and have tried “to fashion women out of male cloth” (6). This assumption of a male subject in human development is grounded in Freud’s theory of psychosexual development and the Oedipus complex—the theory that, at a subconscious level, very young male children desire to have their mothers all to themselves and regard their father as a rival. In this framework, conscience is tied to castration anxiety, the fear that the father (or father figure) can castrate or disempower the younger male.

Freud theorized that “for women the level of what is ethically normal is different from what it is in men” (7) and that women are “more often influenced in their judgements by feelings of affection or hostility” (7). This was theorized not just as difference but as inferiority, and Gilligan argues that this “problem in theory became cast as a problem in women’s development, and the problem in women’s development was located in their experience of relationships” (8).

Nancy Chodorow, a feminist sociologist, disagrees with Freud, theorizing that because women are generally the main caregivers of children, female and male children develop differently. Girls, in seeing themselves like their mothers, fuse “the experience of attachment with the process of identity formation” (8). In contrast, boys define their identity in their separation from their mother. Girls, then, experience their development within empathy and boys within individuation.

As a result, relationships are experienced differently, with the “male gender identity threatened by intimacy while the female gender identity is threatened by separation” (8). Males have trouble with relations, females with individuation. Neither development is superior to the other, but Chodorow points out that because developmental psychology relies on markers of individuation and “increasing separation,” women’s psychological relational embeddedness is diagnosed as a failure to develop.

Both George Herbert Mead and Jean Piaget define childhood games as important in children’s social development. Piaget remarks that boys are much more interested in the rules of games, developing a legalistic approach to these rules. Girls are less interested in regulations and more willing to make exceptions to the rules. For Piaget, the legal sense—which he considers essential to moral development—is lacking in girls.

Piaget argues that moral development occurs in the role-taking experiences within these games. Boys’ games are generally competitive, and one person’s gain requires another’s loss. The rules that govern the structure of the game are respected and considered, and role-taking involves adjudication and often elaborate consideration of the rules of the game. Girls’ games, however, like jump rope and hopscotch, do not involve direct competition and instead involve turn-taking. One person’s success does not necessitate someone else’s failure. When any conflict occurs, girls generally end the game instead of creating a system for resolving disputes. Boys thus learn organizational skills and how to manage large groups of people; girls tend to play in smaller groups, often with best friends, where they do not have to navigate competition.

Chodorow’s theory of sex differences in relation to the mother is extended through Piaget’s analysis of childhood games, where relations are valued in girls’ games and individuation and competition in boys’ games.

Beyond childhood, puberty is generally seen as the most crucial stage of individuation. Freud marks puberty as the stage where the girl interprets her genitalia as castration and a “wound,” which inculcates in her a sense of her inferiority. For Erik Erikson, puberty is the fifth of eight stages of psychosocial development, when a sense of self is being developed that will allow for the work and relations of adulthood. Women, however, are theorized by Erikson as having a delayed formation of identity. For men, identity formation precedes crucial relations, but for women identity is always linked to relations. Erikson, despite these acknowledged differences, charts “human” development along traditionally male lines.

These different paths of development are reiterated in fairy tales, where males assume heroic paths in which they become fully individuated, while females are generally in a role of waiting, usually for a relationship, such as Sleeping Beauty or Snow White.

Researchers also argue that women are anxious about competition and do not do well in competitive environments. Rather than the male desire to 1) achieve success and a related desire and to 2) not fail, women, alternatively, have a fear of success itself, Matina Horner argues. Success as a result of competition is experienced by women as incompatible with femininity. Gilligan points out, however, that some scholars have argued that this anxiety regarding success indicates a sense that the sacrifices made for supposed success are not worth it. Thus, the fear of success is actually a critique of supposed success. Gilligan proposes that a question needing to be asked is why men are so ready to adopt the norms for success rather than to question what is required to achieve that success. Since male-defined success is normative, however, women are left constantly questioning their values, which have been determined to be inferior to male values.

Women’s moral development is concerned with the understanding of relations and responsibilities while men’s is tied to concern regarding “rights and rules” (19). The “paradox” is that what has traditionally defined women as “good” is precisely what marks them as “deficient in moral development” (18).

Freud, Piaget, and Kohlberg are all concerned, too, with women’s lack of impartiality. For Kohlberg, the highest understanding of morality is the understanding of human rights, but this emphasizes a morality of separation rather than one of connection, where the individual rather than the relation is primary.

Gilligan provides excerpts from interview subjects, focusing on one male and one female response, with the male discussing how morality is grounded in leaving others alone and not interfering in others’ lives, while the female discusses the need for cooperation as an inherent good. Kohlberg’s rights conception of morality requires an objective, fair resolution to moral problems, but a relational view of morality does not necessarily seek an “objective” structure in determining morality. Gilligan suggests that a “morality of rights and noninterference” (22) may be “frightening” to women in its “potential justification of indifference” (22). From a male perspective, however, she also suggests that a relational responsibility may be just as frightening in its relativism and lack of rules.

Gilligan concludes with the myth of Demeter and her daughter, Persephone. Upon seeing a beautiful narcissus, Persephone picks it. At that moment the world opens up, and Hades takes her underground. Demeter is so devastated that, as goddess of the earth, she refuses to allow anything to grow. Zeus persuades his brother to return Persephone, but she will still have to spend part of every year underground with Hades. Gilligan reads this story as one that acknowledges the need for women and men to live together. Life-cycle theorists must “divide their attention and begin to live with women as they have lived with men” (23).