Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle

Abstract

Drawing on literary and psychological sources, Carol Gilligan documents the way in which theories of the life cycle, by taking for their model the lives of men, have failed to account for the experience of women. Arguing that this bias has promoted a concern with autonomy and achievement at the expense of attachment and intimacy, she suggests that systematic attention to women's lives, in both theory and research, will allow an integration of these concerns into a more balanced conception of human development.