Carol Gilligan on the Female Psychology Deficit | Big Think

Carol Gilligan on the Female Psychology Deficit

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The paucity of women in psychological studies was striking Carol Gilligan says.

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Carol Gilligan:

In 2002, Carol Gilligan became University Professor at New York University, with affiliations in the School of Law, the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She is currently teaching a seminar at the Law School on Resisting Injustice and an advanced research seminar on The Listening Guide Method of Psychological Inquiry. She is a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge affiliated with the Centre for Gender Studies and with Jesus College.

She received an A.B. in English literature from Swarthmore College, a masters degree in clinical psychology from Radcliffe College and a Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University. Her landmark book In A Different Voice (1982) is described by Harvard University Press as "the little book that started a revolution." Following In A Different Voice, she initiated the Harvard Project on Women's Psychology and Girls' Development and co-authored or edited 5 books with her students.

She received a Senior Research Scholar award from the Spencer Foundation, a Grawemeyer Award for her contributions to education, a Heinz Award for her contributions to understanding the human condition and was named by Time Magazine as one of the 25 most influential Americans.

She was a member of the Harvard faculty for over 30 years and in 1997 became Harvard's first professor of Gender Studies, occupying the Patricia Albjerg Graham chair.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Carol Gilligan: I compared women with what was said to be the human voice and said that the once that conversation had not included women, it is hard now to remember that was something that happened on release Different Voice came out in the 1980s, recently, relatively recently it is like people didn’t know, there were no women in the studies of how they treat heart attacks or in the medical as graduate student, we where told don’t put women in your studies, because it will just mess up your results. So, there was a problem in the representation of what was human and it was distortion a both man and women, but the distortion was different in terms of men where portrayed as having no feelings as not needing relationships, as being disembodied minds. Women where portrayed a wash in emotions and particular at certain times in the month kind of thing and having no self, that having relationships which doesn’t even make sense, because you do not have self whose in relationships that doesn’t make sense and being a sort of like run by our bodies and anatomy’s destiny. And that is the distortion of both, that’s what my work was about, this whole paradigm distorting our understanding of ourselves.