What happens in the course of our childhood that shapes girls and boys so differently? Why do men and women end up with such vastly different psychologies and moralities? Those are questions Carol Gilligan has grappled with since she exploded into the field of developmental psychology in the 1980s with a book called In A Different Voice. 

Translated into sixteen languages, and with over 700,000 copies sold around the world, In A Different Voice started a revolution, making women's voices heard, in their own right and with their own integrity, for virtually the first time in social sciences. Never mind Sigmund Freud.

Since that time, Carol Gilligan has become a towering figure not just in psychology, but in the culture, with an immense body of research and writing that continues to demand a space for the interior life of girls and women in our cultural lexicon. 

In this episode, Carol talks to Elle about what she calls her ‘girl's work’ - as well as that well-known force in the world - that incentivizes girls to cover their honest voices, that makes boys abandon their intimate relationships, and that makes women choose not to say what they know.