Gilligan said moral maturity isn't just following rules — it's staying in relationship

Carol Gilligan challenged the idea that the highest form of moral reasoning is detached, rule-based justice. Studying how women actually talked through dilemmas, she found a second moral voice that weighs relationships, context, and care for particular people over abstract principles. Neither voice is lesser, she argued — moral theory had just been built around only one of them.

— Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development — 1982
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