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Carol Gilligan critiqued Kohlberg's theory for being based on male samples and privileging a justice orientation — abstract rules and individual rights — over a care orientation — relationships, responsibilities, and context. Gilligan argued that many women (and some men) reason morally through an ethics of care, prioritizing compassion, connection, and avoiding harm to relationships. Her three-level model traces progression from self-focused care to care for others to an integrated care of self and others. This challenged developmental psychology to recognize that multiple valid moral frameworks exist.
Compare responses to the Heinz dilemma coded for justice vs. care orientation. Read Gilligan's 'In a Different Voice' alongside critiques debating whether the gender difference is empirically robust.
To understand Gilligan, you first need to see what she was reacting to. Kohlberg's model — which you've already studied — placed abstract reasoning about universal rights and principles at the top of moral development. Stage 6 thinkers invoke rules like "justice requires impartiality" and apply them without exception. This framework was derived almost entirely from studies of boys and men. When Gilligan interviewed women about moral dilemmas in the 1970s, she noticed they weren't reasoning poorly by Kohlberg's standards — they were reasoning *differently*. They kept bringing in relationships, context, and consequences for real people. Under Kohlberg's scoring rubric, this looked like stuck development. Gilligan argued it was a different voice, not a deficient one.
The ethics of care centers on a different moral question. Where Kohlberg asks "What is the right rule?", care ethics asks "Who will be hurt, and how do I preserve the relationships that matter?" Care-oriented reasoners are not ignoring fairness — they are weighting relational harm heavily and treating context as morally relevant. Gilligan's three-level model traces how this orientation develops: the first level is self-focused care (avoid harm to oneself), the second is other-focused care (self-sacrifice for others), and the third is an integrated care that holds both self and others as legitimate objects of concern. Movement through levels is not just cognitive growth but a shift in how the moral agent understands her own standing in the web of relationships.
Consider the Heinz dilemma, where a man considers stealing a drug to save his dying wife. A justice reasoner might say: "Life has greater value than property, and the rule against stealing can have exceptions — he should steal it." A care reasoner might say: "Of course he should steal it — his wife's suffering is concrete and present, and no abstract rule should override a husband's responsibility to the person he loves." Both reach the same conclusion, but through different reasoning paths. In other dilemmas they diverge. A justice reasoner might say a person is obligated to report a friend's wrongdoing to uphold the principle of fairness. A care reasoner might say that honoring the relationship and finding a way to help the friend repair the harm is the more moral response.
What makes Gilligan's contribution durable is the broader methodological point: the sample shapes the theory. By studying only male development, developmental psychology had elevated one valid way of thinking about ethics into the developmental endpoint. Gilligan didn't just add women's voices — she revealed that Kohlberg's framework had built in a bias by treating procedural justice as the apex of moral maturity. Subsequent research showed that both orientations appear in people of all genders, and that the same individual often shifts between frameworks depending on the type of dilemma (impersonal policy questions tend to elicit justice reasoning; personal relationship dilemmas tend to elicit care reasoning).