Blog #16

Carol Gilligan’s piece “Women’s Place in Man’s Life Cycle” discusses a lot of studies on the development of girls and boys. A lot of the studies, however, give preference to males, are solely based on the study of males, or show favoritism to the male. In turn, this causes the females to look inadequate, not up to par, or substandard. One particular part of this piece that demonstrates this idea (and there are several) is the section on the study of boys and girls at play.
On pages 805 through 804 Gilligan talks about a study conducted by Janet Lever on socialization during elementary schools. In the study she talks about the differences in play between boys and girls. This leads to her discussing how boys and girls approach the rules of games.
Boys tended to continue to play games even when problems arose. So instead of ending the game because of a dispute, they tended to come up with a solution that abided to the rules that both sides thought was fair(Jacobus 805).Girls on the other hands didn’t approach the game, or the rules of the games as absolute the same way the boys did. Whenever the girls encountered a problem they tended to the game. Girls approached the rules differently by being more open to making exceptions to them and more tolerant. The terms used to describe girls views to rules by Piaget in Gilligan’s piece was “a more ‘pragmatic’ attitude toward rule” (Jacobus 805).
This section even implied that the boys were thus more developed than the girls making it seem as if the girls are somewhat inferior to the boys. This study of boys, girls, and socialization is just one of the many examples of the favoritism shown to males on studies of differences between the sexes.

Works Cited
Gilligan, Carol. ““Woman’s Place in a Man’s Life Cycle.” A World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writers .Ed. Lee A Jacobus. 7th ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. pp.801-817.