The Care Voice in our World

Changing Our Perspectives

On the Anniversary of the Columbine shootings I read that all the gun control, metal detectors and police presence at schools are not making a difference. Articles on the sad event point out that teaching empathy, anger management and impulse control do have the ability to reduce the amount of these crimes. As a woman who believes strongly in that care* voice, I get that. How unfortunate it is that we still have people even in our state lobbying for college students to carry weapons on campus. Empowering students to share what they know has also had a positive effect. That culture of silence that sometimes accompanies the strong message of conformity (even if it is counter culture), can be stultifying and in some cases, deadly for those who maintain it.
Yesterday at our Gold Award Ceremony for Girl Scouts (a very prestigious and high honor) I mentioned a quote by Admiral Grace Hopper: “It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.” As a woman in the military, I am sure Admiral Hopper many times had to inject the care perspective into the work she was doing, only later to be rewarded for her unique perspective. How wonderful if we could ground more women and men, girls and boys into that care voice? What kind of world might we create?

*Carol Gilligan’s work points out that we have both a “justice” voice in our world and a “care” voice. Both genders are capable of thinking from either perspective, but we often associate the “care” voice with more things “female” --- nurturing, making sure that everyone is taken care of, inclusion. Justice plays out in rule conformity and the sense of entitlement “I was here first.”