Carol Gilligan published In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development in 1983, and ruptured the academic rigidities that had previously hampered any consideration of women’s moral development, independent of prevailing masculine-centric psychological models.

Carol Gilligan while a graduate student at Harvard University, working under the preeminent moral-developmental psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, had the courage to put forth her ideas asserting that feminine moral development proceeded along different lines than the rational hierarchy put forth by Kohlberg. Gilligan held that psychological development for women was based in the development of interpersonal relatedness. She felt that for women, principles of relationship superseded the adherence to rules. Her research revealed how women would use compassion and interpersonal caring in resolving moral dilemmas through communication and dialogue. Subsequent research in developmental psychology supports Gilligan’s ethics of caring.