In a Different Voice

Abstract Over the past ten years, I have been listening to people talking about morality and about themselves. Halfway through that time, I began to hear a distinction in these voices. two ways of speaking about moral problems, two modes of describing the relationship between ocher and self. Differences repressed in the psychological literature as steps in a developmental progression suddenly appeared instead as a contrapuntal theme, women imp the cycle of life and recurring in varying forms in people’s judgments, fantasies, and thoughts. The occasion for this observation was the selection of a sample of women for a study of the relation between judgment and action in a situation of moral conflict and choice. Against the background of the psychological descriptions of identity and moral development which I had read and taught for a number of years, the women’s voices sounded distinct. It was then that I began to notice the recurrent problems in interpreting women’s development and to connect these problems to the repeated exclusion of women from the critical theory-building studies of Physiology research.