It is always important to remember that there are many feminisms, despite bell hook's desire to have one simple definition of the movement. Each of the women represented in The Second Wave has a specific standpoint on many different questions in the field. What would three of these theorists have to say about Carol Gilligan's work if put on a panel to critique it? In the following pages, the intention is to explore the perspectives of Uma Narayan, Elsa Barkley Brown, and Patricia Hill Collins.
Brown's emphasis is on the politics of difference which is certainly what Gilligan's work supports. While Brown is looking at the diversity of women's experiences, Gilligan is looking at the difference between men's and women's experiences of socialization and behavior.
For Brown, difference is not threatening. Instead, difference provides a way of rethinking culture or reshaping our thinking processes themselves. This is similar to Gilligan's approach. For Gilligan, the problem is not in the difference between men's and women's approaches to moral questions, but in the differential judgment of the value of those approaches. Gilligan noted that her discussion of difference has been an attempt to see difference as a marker of the human condition, rather than a problem. She indicated that one of the problems in thinking about, and theorizing about, difference is that the focus has been on determining what is normative and what is deviant (Gilligan, 1993, p. Xviii). Thus, if men's and women's approaches to morality are viewed as different, this only becomes a problem when men's approaches are assumed to be normative and women's approaches are viewed as deviant.
Brown explored still another approach to difference, however. For her, the problem is still not solved even when difference is recognized, and respected, because the tendency in women's history is for difference to be discussed as representing separate categories. She i...