S1: Welcome in San Diego , it's Jade Hindman. On today's show , a conversation with Kyoto Prize winner Carol Gilligan , who was being honored for her work to include women in research. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. This week , winners of the most recent Kyoto Prize are in San Diego to celebrate achievement in the field of arts , sciences and technology. One of the awardees this year is psychologist Carol Gilligan. Early in her career , she began noticing an unsettling fact about research in her field. No one was listening to women research studies developing important theories on human morality and ethics were often developed without including the perspectives of women. All the subjects were men. So she made listening to women and girls a guiding principle for her work. Carol Gilligan joins me now. Carol , welcome to Midday Edition.
S2: Thank you. Thank you for that introduction.
S1: But I mean , first , congratulations to you on this honor. And I think it is so fitting that we have this conversation during Women's History Month because your contribution to research and women is so impactful.
S2: I mean , you know , it's like wake you wake up. I woke up one morning , I think it was in May or June , and I opened my email and , you know , it was like playing monopoly. And you take a chance card and it says , congratulations. You know , you go to boardwalk. I mean , it was just extraordinary. I had no idea. And I knew of the Kyoto Prize because I've written a novel , actually , even though , um , uh , which is about a dancer. And so I had read a lot about Pina Bausch , who had won and read her Kyoto Prize speech. So that's how I knew about the prize. I was so moved because my work is based on bringing first women's voices and then girls voices into what was called the human conversation , but was a conversation of all basically boys and men and only certain boys and men , but never put girls and women were missing. And there was something so moving about this work being recognized at this time by the enormous foundation for this extraordinary prize. Um , and , you know , I felt I was standing with all of women and girls in receiving this prize , that our voices were being recognized. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Oh , wow. You know , I want to go back to something you said there , which is simple. It's that people studied men and wrote about humans. I mean , you said that in an interview.
S2: This was in the 1970s , and I was married. I still am , and I'm the mother of three sons , and I was living in a household with my husband and my three sons. And the dog was male and the cat was male. So , you know , I was like , and I was teaching at Harvard , where almost everyone on the faculty were men. And by an accident of history , I found myself listening to women. I was doing a study of how people think about real , real choices , not hypothetical moral dilemmas. If you were in a lifeboat , what would you do ? But when you come to a place in your life where the roads diverge. And you have to choose. Which way will I go ? I was studying people who had come to such a place and were facing the choice , and I initially was going to study Harvard students who were facing the Vietnam War draft. This was in the 1973 , and then President Nixon ended the draft and then the Supreme Court. This is in Roe v Wade 73 legalizes abortion. So I thought , oh , here are more people who come to a public place. And , you know , you either have a baby or you have an abortion. So I was going to interview those people. I was completely blind to gender. And obviously I started listening to pregnant people , pregnant women. And I thought , wait a minute , this is a different way of speaking than the way I had been teaching when I was teaching at Harvard , the theories of Freud and Erikson and Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg. Um , I mean , honestly , uh , you know , Kohlberg devises six stages of moral development from a study of 84 white boys. And it's like , as if. And the same thing. I mean , across the board. Freud says this is my theory of sexuality , but the sexual life of men alone is accessible to our research. So the whole assumption in this field that I was teaching in was , you can leave out women and miss nothing. And here I was listening to women and I said , wait a minute. You know , here's a different listen to this. This is going to change the conversation. And I started writing about an ethic of care. And , you know , it's still true. Women and often women of color do the lion's share of care work in this society taking care of children , taking care of older people , taking care , just taking care. And so women know something about what it means to take care of someone. And I said , this is an ethic of care. It's an important ethic to listen to it. And then , you know , I wake up one morning last May or June , it says , you've won this huge prize for your work on correcting the misrepresentation of women and girls and speaking about the importance of an ethic of care. And I was just I was so moved , Jade. I really was so moved by this. And I felt like I was standing with all the women and girls whose voices I had brought forward. Mhm.
S1: You know , you talk about the ethic of care. Um , tell me more about that because it is so important to understand your work.
S2: You know , we live in a world Where our lives are interconnected , we are interdependent. And what I do , it's like , you know , walking on a trampoline , you take a step forward and the whole thing starts to move. And so , uh , women were speaking about how to act in a situation where what you do is going to affect a number of people's lives. And it was just a very it was it was a different way of talking about how to think about yourself as not separate. You know , I'm separate and here are my rights , but rather I'm connected. I mean , a pregnant woman is talking about a dilemma of connection. Is this a relationship that is responsible to carry forward ? Who's going to take as one teenager who was in my study said , if I can't take care of myself , how can I take care of a child ? I mean , this kind of question. And if you listen to the abortion debate and then and now. It was like , whose rights take precedence , the rights of the fetus or the rights of the mother ? And it was not a choosing differently in that universe. It was reframing what's the dilemma and how to think about it. And the the key thing is , if you're going to deal with issues of care , uh , you have to be awake and you have to be you have to pay attention and you have to , as one woman said , be awake , as awake as you can and know as much as you can about where you are walking. So instead of sort of standing back and thinking in the abstract about what's justice and so forth , was like , you have to step in and step forward and think , where am I ? And what am I doing ? And how do I take care of all the people who are involved ? And I , you know , for women there , there's an assumption , particularly when you're talking about relating to motherhood , that if somebody's going to be hurt , it should be the woman. And women were starting to question that assumption. Yeah. That ideally nobody should be hurt. But , you know , it was just it was it was a I , it was a because I was so involved in this world , I was teaching at Harvard , I was teaching psychology. And I told you I was living in a household where everybody was male. So , you know , it was kind of highlighted the issue. The dog was male , the cat was male. The other one.
S1: Well , let me ask you this , because you also studied girls asking questions about their experiences in adolescence.
S2: That was after In a Different Voice. And I read , I mean , it's hard to believe this now , but it's exactly what you were saying. In 1980 , the Handbook of Adolescent Psychology comes out , you know , edited by its very prominent psychologist , Joseph Adelson at Michigan , and he asks a leading psychologist to write a chapter for his handbook on female adolescent development. And now , already there's a problem , because if there's a chapter on girls , what's the rest of the book about ? But the woman comes back and says , there's not enough material for even one chapter. And Adelson writes , adolescent girls simply haven't been studied. The psychology of adolescence is the psychology of the male youngster writ large. And then he says , make no mistake , and this is important. Uh , there there's a subtle but pervasive masculine bias , meaning that the description of boys adolescence is biased by an emphasis on so-called masculine qualities. Quote , masculine achievement , independence and separation. And he writes a corresponding neglect of what are usually gendered female qualities , although they're human qualities , which is nurturance , intimacy and love. So I thought , okay , here's a simple path. There's a piece of human history that just simply has to be. That's missing. Which is instead of comparing women with men. I'm going to connect women with our own history , that is , with girls. So with my graduate students , I spend ten years listening to girls. And what I discover is that as girls come of age , as they reach adolescence , they start to say , you can hear it literally , I don't know. And what the I don't know is a cover. They start having to not know what they know and learn what other people want them to say and think and feel and know. So that's where I make this discovery the coming of age. The human voice that connects reason and emotion and the self and relationship goes undercover. And it changed my understanding of development. It changed the way I do research.
S1: Yeah , well , you know , you really had to take your your work. Um , sort of. It had to go against the grain of patriarchy.
S3: Yeah , well , that's a word.
S2: I resisted for a long time because there's a sort of eyes glaze over. You know , you say patriarchy and half the people. But it was really interesting because at a certain point , you started to see that word in The New York Times , and that's when Trump got elected. I define patriarchy very simply. Patriarchy is a way of living , an order of living that's based on gender. I mean , the word is patriarchy. It's an order of living that privileges the voices of some men over other men , fathers , potters , and all men over women. So in that sense , it's an order of domination. But it also and this was the what I said about the the book on adolescence. Um , it , it privileges those qualities which are defined as masculine human qualities , reason. I mean , as if women don't reason. Reason over emotion. The self relationships. The mind over the body. And we know now from neuroscience that it's the connection between mind and body and reason and emotion and self and relationships. That is how we register our experience. So you make these separations and you lose touch with the voice of experience. And I started to write about resistance and I had to ask I saw girls resisting. Um , it's really sweet. And 13 year old , whom we called Judy , talks about separating her mind , which she locates in her gut. She points to her gut and she says , your mind , which is associated with your heart and your soul and your feelings and your real feelings. And she contrasts it to her brain , which she locates in her head and associates with her intelligence and her education. And she says children are in danger of forgetting their minds because of this knowledge that she says shoved at you into your brain. So it's like children were resisting , losing that kind of gut knowing , you know , that that embodied knowing that what you know in your heart , what you what's the phrase you know , in your bones. And I thought that was a healthy resistance. And I thought , what are they resisting ? And they were resisting a culture that would have them privilege , reason over emotion , separate their minds , particularly from their female bodies , and separate themselves from their relationships. And what we know now from neuroscience and from trauma is those separations are not markers of development. They're manifestations of trauma. So psychologists were trauma as development. And my work challenged that. I said , listen to goals.
S1: Yeah , and that's so. It's so true what you say. Um , feminism is also sort of this evolving term. We've seen it change and grow constantly since the 19th century. What does it mean to you to be a feminist now in 2026.
S2: To be a feminist ? To me , it's one of the great liberation movements of human history , because I see feminism as the move to free democracy from patriarchy. I mean , that's just that simple. And right now , that's the fight. And democracy is based on a presumption of equal voice. Everyone has a voice that needs to be listened to and heard and taken seriously. You don't have to agree , but you have to listen. So you if you have equal voice , you can address conflicts in relationships. Patriarchy privileges the voices of the father as the voice of morality and of law. And so it's a difference between voice and violence. I mean , how do you deal with conflict and disagreement ? Do you deal with it by open conversation and debate ? You need equal voice , or do you deal with it by the use of force or the threat of force ? And I , I mean , as I look at the world around me , that's what we're fighting about right now. Wow.
S1: Wow. You know , um , also how we talk about gender , uh , how we define what is masculine , what is feminine that's also evolved so much since you began your work. And I imagine that's a result of your work. Indeed.
S2: I mean , as if women don't think and as if men don't feel. Or to say only men care about justice and only women care about care as if men don't care about care. And if women aren't concerned with fairness , I mean , so you have to ask , why do we repeat stereotypes that are really nonsense if you think about it ? So I used to teach years ago with at Harvard with Eric Erickson , and he was the great psychologist who wrote about identity and adolescence. And he used to say , if you want to know what is the issue that the society cannot deal with ? You know , because it's he says , pay attention to the adolescence. They will dramatize it. They're the truth tellers because , you know , they're growing up , they're coming of age into adulthood , and they're facing a society which in some sense is incoherent. So the kids are talking about gender today , and it's exactly what you said. And , um , you know , it's like , uh , there it's for for adolescence. It's a question of identity , but they're raising the issue into the conversation , which is how have we defined what it means to be masculine ? Does it mean , uh , you know , not to have any of the feelings we associate with femininity , like sadness or vulnerability or emotion ? And does feminine mean being , quote , selfless , having no voice of your own ? When I did my original research , this was in 73 to 75. Um , and , um , Mary Berlinski and I interviewed pregnant women who were thinking about whether to have a baby or to have abortion right after Roe v Wade. And one of the things that caught my ear was the tendency for a woman to label as selfish whatever she wanted to do. So if she wanted to have a baby. That was selfish. If she wanted to have the abortion , that was selfish. And what was good was to be , quote , selfless and do what other people wanted her to do or what she should do. And at that historical moment , this was the 1970s and it was second wave feminism. I heard women beginning to question this equation of feminine goodness with selflessness , and see it instead as to act as if I have no self , as if I'm selfless , as if I have no voice , was an abdication of voice and an invasion of responsibility and relationship. It was being absent where I really needed to be present. So I have women questioning and saying , basically know that to be responsible , uh , and to respond to what's going on , I have to be present. So that was force was at the center of it from the beginning. Mhm.
S1: Mhm. Exactly.
S2: And then.
S3: With the adolescent girls.
S2: I saw them come to a place. I mean honestly I used to say to women we all should spend some time every year with these outspoken 11 year olds. You know.
S1: They'll tell it like it is. Let me tell you.
S3: See , that's just it.
S2: You know , there was this eight year old who was asked about it. Had she ever have to deal with a conflict and blah , blah , blah. And she said at dinner every night when she tries to speak , her brother and sister interrupt her stealing. That was her word , stealing her mother's attention. So the interviewer said , what did you do ? His eight year old said , I brought a whistle to dinner. The interviewer says , what happened ? This little eight year old says , mother , brother and sister stopped talking and looked at me and I said in a nice voice , that's much nicer.
S1: You know what ? As you look at eight year olds , you look at adolescence and you look at your body of work.
S2: I'm deeply hopeful because the human voice is a voice of resistance to these kinds of splits and separations and not knowing and blah , blah , blah. And so the , the , the , the spark of change is within us. I mean , the solution is within us. And , um , you know , it's like there are every year there are new , new crop of eight year olds. I mean.
S1: Oh my gosh , Carol , this was a great conversation. I've been speaking with Carol Gilligan. She is an author , psychologist , and professor at New York University. She's one of three people being honored at the 25th annual Kyoto Prize Symposium , happening this week at UC San Diego. Carol , thank you so much for speaking with me today. And congratulations again.
S2: Oh , Jade , I love talking with you. If we could have gone on right. Absolutely.
S1: Absolutely.
S4: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
