Gilligan: From Literature To Civil Rights Struggles To Psychology at Harvard

Carol Gilligan was born in 1936 in New York City. She majored in English at Swarthmore College during the 1950s: it was an "extraordinary time" at Swarthmore, she says.

"I was involved in the arts, involved in literature," she said. "I was very involved with music, theater and dance."

She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Harvard for a thesis on the effects of stories of temptation on children's motives and behavior.

After graduate school, she moved to Cleveland, where her husband, Jim Gilligan, was attending medical school. The couple has three sons, currently 25, 27 and 30 years old.

"I suppose they have to be called men now," she says.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, Gilligan became active in civil rights and peace organizations and became a member of an interracial dance company.

"It seemed to be something that needed to be done," she says about her involvement in the civil rights and antinuclear movements.

Gilligan worked to register Black voters in northern cities and traveled to Washington D.C. to speak to members of Congress about nuclear issues.

After returning to Harvard in the 1970s, Gilligan served as a teaching fellow in Erik Erikson's life cycle course and began the work that was to become In a Different Voice.

Today, she is one of the few tenured women at Harvard, and that lack is a concern of hers. "So many women students want to work with women faculty," she says. "It just strikes me that there is a deep need for more women faculty members."

Gilligan feels that women are especially needed in her field. "I miss the colleagueship of those who work in a similar vein," she says.