Presented by: Carol Gilligan, PhD

In a special presentation for HPS, renowned social psychologist and feminist Carol Gilligan, PhD will explore the roots of patriarchy and its persistence in contemporary American political and social life. She is best known for her groundbreaking book, In a Different Voice, published in 1982 and described by Harvard University Press as “the little book that started a revolution.” The book challenged traditional views of moral development, asserting that women tend to prioritize an “ethic of care” focusing on relationships and responsibility, whereas men typically favor an “ethic of justice” based on rights and rules. In subsequent publications, Gilligan connected her developmental research with Bowlby’s studies of attachment to describe how gender roles of patriarchal masculinity and femininity are internalized and upheld (Gilligan & Snider, 2017). She asserted that females sacrificed their voices as the price of maintaining relationships, and their silence and men’s violence perpetuated a patriarchal order (Gilligan, 2018). Forty years after the publication of In a Different Voice, its gendered assumptions seem outdated. Gilligan subsequently revised her ideas, presented in her new book In a Human Voice (2023). She asserts that the gender binary and its construction of human capacities as either masculine or feminine is a distortion of reality that is foundational to patriarchy. Though care ethics were initially construed as feminine, Gilligan now views them as a human voice of resistance to patriarchy and an act of liberation.

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