Carol Gilligan’s Different Moral Voice: Gender, Ethics of Care, and the Reconstitution of the Moral Domain

This chapter revisits Carol Gilligan’s contribution to moral thought some forty years since In a Different Voice was first published. It sets out how Gilligan’s work was truly transformative in its critiques of the male-centredness of moral theorising, in its centring of women’s moral experiences, and in its development of what came to be known as care ethics. It is argued that the empirical work underpinning In a Different Voice remains of great value to understanding how complex moral decisions are constituted within dynamics of power, entangled relationships, personal desires, senses of self and worth, and messy practical circumstances. Although more often remembered for Gilligan’s different “voices”, I argue that her work could thus be better remembered for its illustration of the relational constitution of moral action and her insights into how difficult moral decisions are experienced. In this respect, her work provides an interesting counterpoint to more recent psychological accounts of moral judgement. Nevertheless, Gilligan’s work was strongly critiqued from the moment it was published. This chapter engages with these critiques and weighs how her work and her contributions should be understood today.