‘When We Were 9, We Were Honest’

By CAROL GILLIGAN, world-renowned psychologist and writer and a current professor at New York University. Her groundbreaking work on women’s development, In a Different Voice, was called “the little book that started a revolution.” Her research on girls led Time magazine to name her one of the 25 most influential Americans. Her most recent book is Joining the Resistance, where she writes, “The time to act is now.”

I am excited that A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink focuses attention on women’s power to create a more just and caring society. The data presented in this report pose a conundrum: At a time when women constitute half the nation’s workforce, earn a majority of college and advanced degrees, and are the majority of the country’s breadwinners, caregivers, consumers, and voters, why are women and the children who depend on them 70 percent of the more than 100 million Americans living in poverty, near poverty, or going in and out of poverty? On the face of it, it doesn’t make sense. Since women are a majority of the voting population, what stands in the way of using our voices and claiming our power to change this situation?

In my bookIn a Different Voice, I write about the power of the word “selfish.” I hear women criticize themselves as being selfish for responding to their own desires and perceptions, while considering it good to be “selfless”—responsive to others and seemingly without a voice of their own. I also describe women recognizing that their efforts to render themselves selfless are in fact morally problematic, signifying an abdication of their own voices and an evasion of responsibility and relationship. As more and more women realize, to give up one’s voice is to give up on relationship—on the possibility of living in genuine connection with others.¹

Which brings me to my research with girls, the most illuminating work I have done. I viscerally remember the frank and fearless voices of preadolescent girls. When a newspaper article described the research as helping girls “find their voices,” the 9- and 10-year-olds in the project commented: “We have our voices.” And they do! Shrewd in their perceptions and discerning about when and to whom they will say what they see, girls are astute readers of the human world around them. In a discussion about whether it is ever good to tell a lie, Elise, 11 years old and a sixth-grader in an urban public school, said, “My house is wallpapered with lies.”

What happens to this voice? At the end of a five-year study of girls ages 7 to 18, I asked them how they wanted to be involved, now that we were presenting our findings and preparing to publish them in a book. The 13-year-olds—who were 9 when the study began—responded without hesitation: “We want you to tell them everything we said, and we want our names in the book.” But then Tracy, anticipating coming upon her 9-year-old self in a book, said, “When we were 9, we were stupid.” I said it would never have occurred to me to use the word “stupid,” because what struck me most about them when they were 9 was how much they knew. “I mean,” Tracy said, “when we were 9, we were honest.” Between 9 and 13, an honest voice came to seem or to sound stupid.²

How does this happen? Over and over again, I have heard adolescent girls describe the pressures they have felt and the incentives they were given to dismiss an honest voice as stupid, to hear it as crazy, or to judge it as bad or selfish or wrong. Iris explained, “If I were to say what I was feeling and thinking, no one would want to be with me. My voice would be too loud.” And then she added, “But you have to have relationships.” I agreed and asked, “But if you are not saying what you are feeling and thinking, then where are you in these relationships?” Iris saw the paradox: She gave up relationship in order to have relationships, muting her voice so that she could be with other people. The move is adaptive—Iris was the valedictorian of her high school class and was admitted to the competitive college that was her first choice—but it was psychologically incoherent.³

The startling discovery of my research was many girls’ ability to see this. Coming of age, they faced a crisis of connection where having a voice jeopardized relationships and not having a voice meant not being in relationship. My eye was caught by girls’ resistance to losing their voices and giving up on relationships and also by the force brought to bear on their resistance—the seeming investment of others and of society at large in their capitulation. To be included and found acceptable in the eyes of the world often hinged on not saying what they saw, not listening to what they heard, and not knowing what they knew.⁴

“The voice that stands up for what I believe in has been buried deep inside me,” 16-year-old Tanya said, and her observation is a reminder to women: A voice of integrity and conviction resides within us. It may have been silenced, but it is not lost. This is the voice of love and the voice of democratic citizenship.⁵

A voice of integrity and conviction resides within us. It may have been silenced, but it is not lost. This is the voice of love and the voice of democratic citizenship.

My research on girls’ development has now been joined by my studies of boys. Boys also come under pressure to bury parts of themselves—those aspects of themselves gendered as “feminine”—meaning their tenderness, their vulnerability, and their capacity for empathy, cooperation, and care.⁶ When adolescent girls say “I don’t know” to cover what they do know and boys say “I don’t care” to conceal what they do care about, they are following a path that will lead us over the brink. But as the healthy body resists infection, the healthy psyche resists dissociation. It resists not knowing and not caring.

Madie Winans, 10, and her sister Aubrey, 16, wait for their mother Allie to finish cooking dinner. The girls live with both of their parents in Missoula, Montana. {AMI VITALE}

It is patriarchy, not nature, that characterizes men as the victors and women as the losers, men as independent and women as dependent, men as powerful and women as powerless, calling these qualities “masculine” and “feminine.” Within ourselves, we know this is a lie. A Woman’s Nation will push back from the brink when women do not dismiss an honest voice as stupid or crazy, when women do not disavow truth in the name of goodness, when we do not abandon ourselves or other women, and when we do not dissociate ourselves from our humanity.

REFERENCES

The studies of girls discussed in this essay were part of the Harvard Project on Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development from 1981 to 1991. Project researchers interviewed girls from private and public schools and initiated intervention programs, including the Women Teaching Girls/Girls Teaching Women retreats, the Women and Race retreats, and the Strengthening Healthy Resistance and Courage in Girls project.

Brown, Lyn Mikel and Carol Gilligan. 1992. Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Gilligan, Carol, Nona P. Lyons, and Trudy Hanmer, eds. 1990. Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Gilligan, Carol, Annie G. Rogers, and Deborah Tolman. 1991. Women, Girls, and Psychotherapy: Reframing Resistance. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press.

Gilligan, Carol. 2011. Joining the Resistance. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press.

Taylor, Jill Mclean, Carol Gilligan, and Amy Sullivan. 1995. Between Voice and Silence: Women and Girls, Race and Relationships. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.