Rating: 
Summary: Good ideas at last
Review: Any woman who wonders why her childhood dreams and ambitions changed so radically at puberty should read this book. Ms. Gilligan has found a disturbing thread of truth running through all the lives of the girls included in her study. For those of us heartily tired of other people telling us who and what we are, it is refreshing and insightful to find someone who is willing, instead, to listen.
Rating: 
Summary: interesting but poorly substantiated
Review: Any work that cliams to make sweeping findings on gender and perspective that are based on samples using as few subjects as those reported in this book must be taken with a grain of salt. The writer uses tiny samples and makes broad generalizations on the basis of them. What is even more distturbing is that I have seen her work cited by other writers as a conclusive source. Furthur, the subjects presented in this work do not respond to the ethical problems presented to them, but rather seek to change the conditions of those problems. In given a situation where one's loved one is ill and he does not have the money to buy the medicine without which she will die he must chose if he will steal the medicine. The subjects in this study seek to change the conditions of the test; well, gee, if the person with the medicine REALLY understood how sick she was maybe he would give it or perhaps a fundraiser could be held. If these were viable options than there would be no ethicial problem. Eventually, one must face the black and white choice. I would assume that some men also thought of these possibilities but, given the conditions of the test, understood that they were not options ( perhaps already having been attempted). The responses that Gilligan relies on in her study seem to say nothing about how to respond to ethical challenges as much as how to avoid them or put them off as long as possible. Had she attacked the validity of the test as unrealistic, biased, whatever, perhaps her work would have had more impact. On the other hand, I belive that Gilligan is fairly accurate in her analysis of the way that men and woman differ in their approach to many things. It is unfortunate that she based her conclusions upon evidence so weak as to amount to none. I have great respect for woman and to not denigrate the way that they look at the world, however, I think that an analysis of them on such paltry evidence weakens her argument and that of all those who came after that use her as a source. overall, I think that she reaches a conclusion that is probably not far off the mark but built upon a weak foundation. I hope that those that derive their work from her's find another source before they are called into question.
Rating:
Summary: interesting but poorly substantiated
Review: Any work that cliams to make sweeping findings on gender and perspective that are based on samples using as few subjects as those reported in this book must be taken with a grain of salt. The writer uses tiny samples and makes broad generalizations on the basis of them. What is even more distturbing is that I have seen her work cited by other writers as a conclusive source. Furthur, the subjects presented in this work do not respond to the ethical problems presented to them, but rather seek to change the conditions of those problems. In given a situation where one's loved one is ill and he does not have the money to buy the medicine without which she will die he must chose if he will steal the medicine. The subjects in this study seek to change the conditions of the test; well, gee, if the person with the medicine REALLY understood how sick she was maybe he would give it or perhaps a fundraiser could be held. If these were viable options than there would be no ethicial problem. Eventually, one must face the black and white choice. I would assume that some men also thought of these possibilities but, given the conditions of the test, understood that they were not options ( perhaps already having been attempted). The responses that Gilligan relies on in her study seem to say nothing about how to respond to ethical challenges as much as how to avoid them or put them off as long as possible. Had she attacked the validity of the test as unrealistic, biased, whatever, perhaps her work would have had more impact. On the other hand, I belive that Gilligan is fairly accurate in her analysis of the way that men and woman differ in their approach to many things. It is unfortunate that she based her conclusions upon evidence so weak as to amount to none. I have great respect for woman and to not denigrate the way that they look at the world, however, I think that an analysis of them on such paltry evidence weakens her argument and that of all those who came after that use her as a source. overall, I think that she reaches a conclusion that is probably not far off the mark but built upon a weak foundation. I hope that those that derive their work from her's find another source before they are called into question.
Rating: 
Summary: Gilligan just doesn't get it!
Review: Carol Gilligan's "research" has been strongly contradicted by Cristina Hoff Summers in the May 2000 Atlantic Monthly. Before buying the Gilligan book, I suggest you read Hoff Sommers' devastating article.
Rating:
Summary: A post-modern paradigm - and an ancient one as well
Review: Carol Gilligan's work has the great virtue of asking the basic question - is Revealed Wisdom about ethical decision making bias free? She demonstrates that it is not. Interestingly, Stephen Covey agrees with her, something which has been overlooked by other reviewers of this book. Her final summation is that placing relationships to the larger human community over deontological abstractions about justice constitutes a higher level of ethical decision making. The book has garnered much attention as a female challenge to male constructions of ethical decision making. This is simplistic. Gilligan does indeed point out that, as Kihlberg postulated, women may be more likely than men to make ethical decisions based on responsibilites to others rather than on abstractions. She questions the validity of Kohlberg's conclusion that this is a lower level of ethical reasoning, and she questions this not on the basis of gender but on the basis of logic and ethics. (Kohlberg, by the way, never explains why he believes that justice as abstraction represents a higher level of ethical decision making than justice in context of community.) There are many cultures which hold that the highest level of ethical decision making incorporates responsibility to others. Unfortunately, neither Kohlberg nor Gilligan is an anthropologist -- nor are they ethicists. They are both psychologists and thus limited in their framework. This is not a gender issue; this is a survival issue for the human race! Stephen Covey, in his various 7 Habits of Highly Effective People comes to much the same conclusion, without discussing gender.
Rating:
Summary: An indepth look at how women develop differently from men.
Review: Dr. Gilligan presents an authoratative look at the psychological development of women, giving particular attention to the moral development course that women take. The work stems from her work as a research assistant to Lawrence Kohlberg in his seminal study of stages of moral development. Dr. Gilligan demonstrates that men and women grow up speaking in "different" voices. The book presents Dr. Gilligan's work with women and compares that developmental course with that of the males that she and Kohlberg studied in Iowa. The conclusion that males grow up and take on a psychology that is legalistic and logic centered, while women grow up relationship oriented has formed the basis for much of the works such as Gray's Mars vs Venus series.
Rating: 
Summary: A mandatory "primer" for all
Review: Excellent review of how pyschology, as a screen, looks at men and women differently. Read it for nothing other than the review of how six year old boys and girls react differently to the ethical dilemma "Hines dilemma". Tough to get through in spots, given its scholarly nature, but its a book as a business-woman I keep on my shelf at all times.
Rating:
Summary: Both Ground-Breaking AND Interesting!!
Review: Gilligan's "In a Different Voice" attempts to dispute the often misogynistic psychological assertions made by her male predecessors. Gilligan is primarily concerned with differentiating between male and female moral and identity development. Her thesis is ultimately to prove that male psychologists tended to sample from a group of males,while later outrageously drawing conclusions based upon the data derived from the entirely male experimental group and applying the information to males and females alike. Gilligan is essentially groundbreaking, in her sense of finding fault with the psychological research which does not include a variety of sampling and interviewing. She also asserts that not only have psychologists derived false and misleading conclusions regarding female adolescent development, but psychologists have also unfairly generalized female and male moral and identity development. Gilligan has conducted research to come to the conclusion that adolescent females develop in a fashion very dissimilar from that of males, which she shares in this eloquent and engaging book!
Rating:
Summary: Both Ground-Breaking AND Interesting!!
Review: Gilligan's "In a Different Voice" attempts to dispute the often misogynistic psychological assertions made by her male predecessors. Gilligan is primarily concerned with differentiating between male and female moral and identity development. Her thesis is ultimately to prove that male psychologists tended to sample from a group of males,while later outrageously drawing conclusions based upon the data derived from the entirely male experimental group and applying the information to males and females alike. Gilligan is essentially groundbreaking, in her sense of finding fault with the psychological research which does not include a variety of sampling and interviewing. She also asserts that not only have psychologists derived false and misleading conclusions regarding female adolescent development, but psychologists have also unfairly generalized female and male moral and identity development. Gilligan has conducted research to come to the conclusion that adolescent females develop in a fashion very dissimilar from that of males, which she shares in this eloquent and engaging book!
Rating:
Summary: lab rats
Review: Gilligans writing was NOT revolutionary...I hope! if so the future is doomed, ignorance will reign. Gilligan's book did not "move" me whatsoever, I found not a single good quote or anything insightful in anyway. Her statements and thesis'es were something any one with an IQ over 50 would come up immediatly when thinking of feminist theory. Her form of writing dissapointed me, giving hypothetical situation A, person B, a man, said this, person C a women said this. It is as if she is giving her report about her lab rats. I do not recommend you read this unless you wish to be lulled into a very angry sleep.
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