Women in crisis and transition

July 18-Crisis and Transition

Gilligan continues with her interviews of women in a study who had abortions. She discusses in detail how women who have under gone what they consider a crisis (pregnancy) revel how they have been changed by it. Even though their stories vary, one thing seems to be obvious: none of them under took the decision frivolously. The overall conclusion by Gilligan is that woman worried about how the pregnancy would affect their relationships.

Many women experienced a type of crisis when they questioned why it was important to care. This crisis occurred because when learn to put relationships as primary from a very early point in their development. Gilligan (1998) observed that, “ {c}onstruing their caring as a weakness and identifying the man’s position with strength, they conclude that the strong need not be moral and that only weak care about relationships. In this construction abortion becomes, for the woman, a test of her strength.” (p. 124). To clarify, the male position as viewed by the women in this study is that the men view the abortion as something necessary and a resolution to what is considered as the problem.

Basically Gilligan is attempting to say that the women’s position is not one of weakness, it is simply different from the male perspective, but society views it as different from what I considered the norm, and so if it is different, it must be wrong.