The mismatch between women's experience and the representation of human moral development, noted throughout the psychological literature, has generally been seen to indicate a problem in women's development. Lawerence Kohlberg is one of those who claims a representation of human development. Carol Gilligan, who has read and taught for a long time about the psychological representations of identity and moral development like the one claimed by Kohlberg, notices the problems in interpreting women's development and connects these problems to the continuous exclusion of women from the critical theory-building studies of psychological research. Instead, she believes that the failure of women to fit existing models of human growth may be caused by a problem in the representation, a limitation in the conception of human condition and an omission of certain truths about life. I, as an ordinary person, support Gilligan's point of view, not because I am a female, but because of the following reason. Just as what Gilligan said, there is a tendency to construct a single scale of measurement, and the scale has generally been derived from and standardized on the basis of men's interpretations of research data drawn mainly or completely from studies of males, then psychologists use male behavior as the 'norm' and female behavior as some kind of deviation from the norm. Therefore, when women do not fit into the standards of psychological expectations, people generally conclude that something is wrong with the women.
Lawence Kohlberg claims that there are five or six stages of moral development that define the progession from moral immaturity to moral maturity. In general, humans proceed from egocentric orientations in which simple pleasure and pain are the main considerations, to contractual, altruistic, and principled orientations. At stages 1 and 2, egocentric understanding of fairness is based on individual need. Then at stages 3 and 4, the conception of fairness anchored in the shared conventions of societal agreement. Finally, at stages 5 and 6, morality is seen as having a higher source than either social conventions or individual preferences. Principled understanding of fairness then rests on the free- standing logic of equality and reciprocity.
Kohlberg's theory is based on data drawn from an all-male sample. Kohlberg's six stages that describe the development of moral judgement from childhood to adulthood are based on a study of eighty-four boys whose development Kohlberg has followed for a period of over twenty years. The sorts of problems Kohlberg has his subjects talk about are all of a very specific sort and involve only a portion of the set of ethical issues humans face. The problems are all dilemmas, so there is always a small number of possible choices, and all problems are problems of justice or fairness. Needless to say, many moral issues are much more complex and have nothing to do with justice or fairness. Although Kohlberg claims universality for his stage sequence, those groups not included in his original sample rarely reach his higher stages. Those who appear to be deficient in moral development when measured by Kohlberg's scale are women. Their judgments seem to reach only the third stage of his six-stage sequence. At this stage, morality is expressed in interpersonal terms and goodness is equated with helping and pleasing others. This conception of goodness is considered by Kohlberg to be functional in the lives of mature women in the home. He implies that if women enter the traditional arena of male activities, then they will recognize the inadequacy of this moral perspective, and only in this way can they progress like men toward higher stages where relationships are subordinated to rules and rules to universal principles of justice.
Clearly, the reason why woment cannot reach the higher stages of Kohlberg's scale is not because their moral development cannot reach maturity. In Gilligan's research, she has found that women's moral development centers on the elaboration of the knowledge of the importance of responsibility, relationships, and care. This importance is something that women have known from the beginning. However, because that knowledge in women has been considered "intuitive" or "instinctive," psychologists have neglected to describe its development. The women's care for and sensitivity to the needs of others traditionally have defined as the "goodness" of women, but these also mark the women as deficient in moral development.
Gilligan's studies expanded the usual design of research on moral judgment by asking how people defined moral problems and what experiences they defined as moral conflicts in their lives, rather than by focusing on their thinking about problems presented to them for resolutions. Gilligan believes that the moral problem for women arises from conflicting responsibilities rather than from competing rights. The resolution of this problem requires a mode of thinking that is contextual and narrative rather than formal and abstract. This conception of morality centers moral development around the understanding of responsibility and relationships, just as the conception of morality as fairness ties moral development to the understanding of rights and rules. The critical reason for women's failure to develop within the constraints of Kohlberg's system may be this different construction of the moral problem by women. The morality of rights differs from the morality of responsibility in its emphasis on separation rather than connection, in its consideration of the individual rather than the relationship as primary.
In her studies, Gilligan finds out the differences between women's and men's moral developments. Women identify themselves through connection and are afraid of separation, while men identify themselves through separation and are afraid of connection. Women are more sensitive to the needs of others which is considered to be their weakness. Women see morality in terms of caring, responsibility and relationships; on the other hand, men see it in terms of learning how to exercise their rights without interfering with the rights of others. Women not only define themselves by human relationship but also judge themselves in terms of their ability to care. The ideal of care is an activity of relationship, of seeing and responding to need, taking care of the world by connection so that no one is left alone. But while women have taken care of men, men have, in their theories of psychological development, as in their economic arrangements, tended to assume or devalue that care. Moral maturity for women is the ability to balance their care for others and the care for themselves. Women describe morality as "the constant tension between being part of something larger and a sort of self-contained entity," and they see ability to live with that tension as the source of moral character and strength.
The stereotypes of Kohlberg's theory suggest a splitting of love and work that degrade expressive capacities of women while placing instrumental abilities in the males' world. These stereotypes reflect a conception of adulthood that is itself out of balance. This conception favors the separateness of the individual self over connection to others, and leans more toward an individual life of work than toward the interdependence of love and care. The women's development discovered by Gilligan recognizes and protects the continuing importance of attachment in the human life cycle; thus it works against those who are celebrating separation, autonomy, individuation, and natural rights. Life-cycle theorists should divide their attention and begin to live with women as they have lived with men, so that they can encompass the experience of both sexes and their theories can become correspondingly more universal and balanced.