Carol Gilligan (1982) sparked a heated academic debate with her popular book In a different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. In this book Gilligan departs from the traditional sequential stage modals advocated by luminary psychologists such as Piaget (1925) and Kohlberg (1969) and develops her own moral orientation model. Gilligan criticises these theories as she claims they are insensitive to females ‘different voice’ on morality and therefore result in women achieving lower stages, thereby labelling them morally inferior to men. Gilligan (1982; also see Langdale’ 1986; Lyons, 1983; and Noddings, 1984) proposed that male and females hold different life orientations, with particular emphasis on their moral belief structure. According to Walker et al., (1987) a moral orientation ‘represents a conceptually distinctive framework or perspective for organising and understanding the moral domain’ (p.844). Gilligan’s moral orientation model states that males typically have a justice/rights orientation and females have a care/response orientation. For the purposes of this study a justice/rights orientation and a care/response orientation is operationalised according to the definitions utilised in Brown et al’s. (1990) Reading Narratives of Conflict and Choice for Self and Moral Voices: A Relational Method. A care voice is defined by Brown et al. (1990) as describing ‘relationships in term s of attachment/detachment, connection or disconnection.’ (p.30.). A justice voice is defined as describing ‘ relationships in terms of inequality/equality, reciprocity or lack of respect’ (p.30.). Gilligan believes that males typically have a justice/rights orientation because of their individualistic and separate conception of the self, their detached objectivity, their basing of identity on occupation and their tendency to gravitate towards applying abstract an...
