In a Different Voice

In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development is a 1982 book on gender studies by the American professor Carol Gilligan. Harvard University Press describes it as "the little book that started a revolution". Its starting point is a critique of Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development. Kohlberg had built his theory on a sample of boys, as he had been advised to do, and when his data showed that girls on average reached a lower level of moral development than boys, Gilligan questioned the premises behind that result.

She argued that Kohlberg's scoring method favored a principled way of reasoning, more common among boys, over a moral argument centred on relationships and care, which she associated more with girls and women. She distinguished between two orientations: an ethics of justice, which resolves dilemmas through rights and by choosing the solution that harms the fewest people, and an ethics of care, which starts from ties to others and from responsibility toward them. Drawing on interviews with women referred to abortion and pregnancy-counselling centres, she described three stages: preconventional, conventional and postconventional.

The book had wide influence in psychology, moral philosophy and gender studies, and it gave rise to a communication theory known as the "different voice" theory. It also drew criticism. Later reviews argued that her claims were not well supported by empirical studies, and the debate over whether Kohlberg's model captures the full scope of the moral domain remains active.