Beyond Gender Difference to a Theory of Care

The research for this paper was conducted with support from a Scholar's Incentive Award from the City University of New York and with the aid of the research facilities office of the Library of Congress. I am grateful to these institutions for their support. Earlier drafts of this paper were read at the University of Minnesota in May 1985, at Hunter College in October 1985, and at the seminar on "Feminist Ways of Knowing" held at Douglass College in October 1985. I wish to thank the many listeners who raised questions on these occasions. Special thanks are due Mary Dietz and Annmarie Levins, who commented on earlier drafts of this paper. See Carol Gilligan, "In a Different Voice: Women's Conceptions of Self and of Morality," Harvard Educational Review 47, no. 4 (November 1977): 481-517, "Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle," Harvard Educational Review 49, no. 4 (November 1979): 431-46, "Justice and Responsibility: Thinking about Real Dilemmas of Moral Conflict and Choice," in Toward Moral and Religious Maturity: The First International Conference on Moral and Religious Development (Morristown, N.J.: Silver Burdett Co., 1980), In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), "Do the Social Sciences Have an Adequate Theory of Moral Development?" in Social Science as Moral Inquiry, ed. Norma Haan, Robert N. Bellah, Paul Rabinow, and William M. Sullivan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 33-51, and "Reply" in "On In a Different Voice: An Interdisciplinary Forum," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and