In a Different Voice

In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development is a book on gender studies by American professor Carol Gilligan, published in 1982, which Harvard University Press calls "the little book that started a revolution".

In the book, Gilligan criticized Kohlberg's stages of moral development of children. Kohlberg's data showed that girls on average reached a lower level of moral development than boys did. Kohlberg's theory (based on his 1958 dissertation) had been developed on a sample of boys (as he had been advised to do). Gilligan stated that the scoring method Kohlberg used tended to favor a principled way of reasoning (one more common to boys) over a moral argumentation concentrating on relations, which would be more amenable to girls. The analysis by Gilligan about Kohlberg's theory was later challenged, although the debate about Kohlberg's model not representing the full scope of the moral domain remains active.