“Chapter One

In 1990, Carol Gilligan announced to the world that America’s adolescent girls were in crisis. In her words, “As the river of a girl’s life flows into the sea of Western culture, she is in danger of drowning or disappearing.” Gilligan offered little in the way of conventional evidence to support this alarming finding. Indeed, it is hard to imagine what sort of empirical research could establish so large a claim. But Gilligan quickly attracted powerful allies.”

“Gilligan’s ideas had special resonance in women’s groups already committed to the proposition that our society is unsympathetic to women. Such organizations were naturally receptive to bad news about girls. The interest of the venerable and politically influential American Association of University Women (AAUW), in particular, was piqued. Officers at the AAUW were reported to be “intrigued and alarmed” by Gilligan’s findings. “Wanting to know more,” they commissioned a polling firm to study whether American schoolgirls were being drained of their self-confidence.

In 1991, the AAUW announced the disturbing results: “Most [girls] emerge from adolescence with a poor self-image.” Anne Bryant, then executive director of the AAUW and an expert in public relations, organized a media campaign to spread the word that “an unacknowledged American tragedy” had been uncovered. Newspapers and magazines around the country carried the bleak tidings that girls were being adversely affected by gender bias that eroded their self-esteem. Susan Schuster, at the time president of the AAUW, candidly explained to The New York Times why the AAUW had undertaken the research in the first place: “We wanted to put some factual data behind our belief that girls are getting shortchanged in the classroom.”

At the time the AAUW’s self-esteem results were making headlines, a little-known journal called Science News, which has been supplying information on scientific and technical developments to interested newspapers since 1922, quoted leading adolescent psychologists who questioned the validity of the self-esteem poll. But somehow the doubts of the experts were not reported in the hundreds of news stories the AAUW study generated.

The AAUW quickly commissioned a second study, How Schools Shortchange Girls. This new study, carried out by the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women and released in 1992, asserted a direct causal relationship between girls’ (alleged) second-class status in the nation’s schools and deficiencies in their level of self-esteem. Carol Gilligan’s psychological girl crisis was thus transformed into a pressing civil rights issue: girls w…”

“Harvard

September 10, 1997 CONTACTS:

Ariadne Valsamis, 617-496-1895

Carol Gilligan Named to Chair in Gender Studies “

“There has been criticism of Gilligan’s work and much of it has come from Christina Hoff Sommers, PhD. She says that Gilligan has failed to produce the data for her research. She condemns the fact that Gilligan used anecdotal evidence, that researchers have not been able to duplicate her work, and that the samples used were too small. She thinks the field of gender studies needs to be put to the test of people from fields such as neuroscience or evolutionary psychology rather than from the area of education. She feels strongly that promoting an anti-male agenda hurts both males and females. Public policy and funding has been allocated based on Gilligan’s data, which Sommers says is not publicly available.”

“Overall, the regression analysis of earnings one year after graduation suggests that a 5 percent pay gap between women and men remains after accounting for all variables known to affect earnings.”

“Women make only 80 percent of the salaries their male peers do one year after college…”

“What is “comparable worth”?

Comparable worth can be defined as shorthand for “equal pay for work of equal value.” Whereas the Equal Pay Act required equal pay when men and women were doing substantially the same work, it does not impact women who make less than men for comparable work. Many of the jobs traditionally done by women have been systematically undervalued in the marketplace. The result is that jobs disproportionately held by women are paid less than comparable.”

“Consider that women’s wages today are still only about 66 percent of men’s wages. Studies show that factors such as seniority, reduced hours for child care, and maternity leave cannot account for the significant wage gap between men and women. Much of this gap, it appears, is due to large differences between wages paid for traditionally “men’s jobs” and those paid for “women’s jobs.” Comparable worth has been promoted by feminists and advocates of women’s rights as the most significant new tool in the struggle to bring women’s economic positions up to the level of men’s.

Like school bussing and affirmative action, comparable worth is a strategy that attempts to correct past injustices. But implementation of comparable worth risks imposing new costs on society, and raises new questions. Should public and private employers restructure their wage scales, at some costs to themselves–and possibly to society at large–in order to achieve just compensation based on the comparable worth doctrine?”

“Chapter One

In 1990, Carol Gilligan announced to the world that America’s adolescent girls were in crisis. In her words, “As the river of a girl’s life flows into the sea of Western culture, she is in danger of drowning or disappearing.” Gilligan offered little in the way of conventional evidence to support this alarming finding. Indeed, it is hard to imagine what sort of empirical research could establish so large a claim. But Gilligan quickly attracted powerful allies.”

“Gilligan’s ideas had special resonance in women’s groups already committed to the proposition that our society is unsympathetic to women. Such organizations were naturally receptive to bad news about girls. The interest of the venerable and politically influential American Association of University Women (AAUW), in particular, was piqued. Officers at the AAUW were reported to be “intrigued and alarmed” by Gilligan’s findings. “Wanting to know more,” they commissioned a polling firm to study whether American schoolgirls were being drained of their self-confidence.

In 1991, the AAUW announced the disturbing results: “Most [girls] emerge from adolescence with a poor self-image.” Anne Bryant, then executive director of the AAUW and an expert in public relations, organized a media campaign to spread the word that “an unacknowledged American tragedy” had been uncovered. Newspapers and magazines around the country carried the bleak tidings that girls were being adversely affected by gender bias that eroded their self-esteem. Susan Schuster, at the time president of the AAUW, candidly explained to The New York Times why the AAUW had undertaken the research in the first place: “We wanted to put some factual data behind our belief that girls are getting shortchanged in the classroom.”

At the time the AAUW’s self-esteem results were making headlines, a little-known journal called Science News, which has been supplying information on scientific and technical developments to interested newspapers since 1922, quoted leading adolescent psychologists who questioned the validity of the self-esteem poll. But somehow the doubts of the experts were not reported in the hundreds of news stories the AAUW study generated.

The AAUW quickly commissioned a second study, How Schools Shortchange Girls. This new study, carried out by the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women and released in 1992, asserted a direct causal relationship between girls’ (alleged) second-class status in the nation’s schools and deficiencies in their level of self-esteem. Carol Gilligan’s psychological girl crisis was thus transformed into a pressing civil rights issue: girls w…”

“Harvard

September 10, 1997 CONTACTS:

Ariadne Valsamis, 617-496-1895

Carol Gilligan Named to Chair in Gender Studies “

“There has been criticism of Gilligan’s work and much of it has come from Christina Hoff Sommers, PhD. She says that Gilligan has failed to produce the data for her research. She condemns the fact that Gilligan used anecdotal evidence, that researchers have not been able to duplicate her work, and that the samples used were too small. She thinks the field of gender studies needs to be put to the test of people from fields such as neuroscience or evolutionary psychology rather than from the area of education. She feels strongly that promoting an anti-male agenda hurts both males and females. Public policy and funding has been allocated based on Gilligan’s data, which Sommers says is not publicly available.”

“Overall, the regression analysis of earnings one year after graduation suggests that a 5 percent pay gap between women and men remains after accounting for all variables known to affect earnings.”

“Women make only 80 percent of the salaries their male peers do one year after college…”

“What is “comparable worth”?

Comparable worth can be defined as shorthand for “equal pay for work of equal value.” Whereas the Equal Pay Act required equal pay when men and women were doing substantially the same work, it does not impact women who make less than men for comparable work. Many of the jobs traditionally done by women have been systematically undervalued in the marketplace. The result is that jobs disproportionately held by women are paid less than comparable.”

“Consider that women’s wages today are still only about 66 percent of men’s wages. Studies show that factors such as seniority, reduced hours for child care, and maternity leave cannot account for the significant wage gap between men and women. Much of this gap, it appears, is due to large differences between wages paid for traditionally “men’s jobs” and those paid for “women’s jobs.” Comparable worth has been promoted by feminists and advocates of women’s rights as the most significant new tool in the struggle to bring women’s economic positions up to the level of men’s.

Like school bussing and affirmative action, comparable worth is a strategy that attempts to correct past injustices. But implementation of comparable worth risks imposing new costs on society, and raises new questions. Should public and private employers restructure their wage scales, at some costs to themselves–and possibly to society at large–in order to achieve just compensation based on the comparable worth doctrine?”

“Chapter One

In 1990, Carol Gilligan announced to the world that America’s adolescent girls were in crisis. In her words, “As the river of a girl’s life flows into the sea of Western culture, she is in danger of drowning or disappearing.” Gilligan offered little in the way of conventional evidence to support this alarming finding. Indeed, it is hard to imagine what sort of empirical research could establish so large a claim. But Gilligan quickly attracted powerful allies.”

“Gilligan’s ideas had special resonance in women’s groups already committed to the proposition that our society is unsympathetic to women. Such organizations were naturally receptive to bad news about girls. The interest of the venerable and politically influential American Association of University Women (AAUW), in particular, was piqued. Officers at the AAUW were reported to be “intrigued and alarmed” by Gilligan’s findings. “Wanting to know more,” they commissioned a polling firm to study whether American schoolgirls were being drained of their self-confidence.

In 1991, the AAUW announced the disturbing results: “Most [girls] emerge from adolescence with a poor self-image.” Anne Bryant, then executive director of the AAUW and an expert in public relations, organized a media campaign to spread the word that “an unacknowledged American tragedy” had been uncovered. Newspapers and magazines around the country carried the bleak tidings that girls were being adversely affected by gender bias that eroded their self-esteem. Susan Schuster, at the time president of the AAUW, candidly explained to The New York Times why the AAUW had undertaken the research in the first place: “We wanted to put some factual data behind our belief that girls are getting shortchanged in the classroom.”

At the time the AAUW’s self-esteem results were making headlines, a little-known journal called Science News, which has been supplying information on scientific and technical developments to interested newspapers since 1922, quoted leading adolescent psychologists who questioned the validity of the self-esteem poll. But somehow the doubts of the experts were not reported in the hundreds of news stories the AAUW study generated.

The AAUW quickly commissioned a second study, How Schools Shortchange Girls. This new study, carried out by the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women and released in 1992, asserted a direct causal relationship between girls’ (alleged) second-class status in the nation’s schools and deficiencies in their level of self-esteem. Carol Gilligan’s psychological girl crisis was thus transformed into a pressing civil rights issue: girls w…”

“Harvard

September 10, 1997 CONTACTS:

Ariadne Valsamis, 617-496-1895

Carol Gilligan Named to Chair in Gender Studies “

“There has been criticism of Gilligan’s work and much of it has come from Christina Hoff Sommers, PhD. She says that Gilligan has failed to produce the data for her research. She condemns the fact that Gilligan used anecdotal evidence, that researchers have not been able to duplicate her work, and that the samples used were too small. She thinks the field of gender studies needs to be put to the test of people from fields such as neuroscience or evolutionary psychology rather than from the area of education. She feels strongly that promoting an anti-male agenda hurts both males and females. Public policy and funding has been allocated based on Gilligan’s data, which Sommers says is not publicly available.”

“Overall, the regression analysis of earnings one year after graduation suggests that a 5 percent pay gap between women and men remains after accounting for all variables known to affect earnings.”