Research Paper on:
Carol Gilligan/Female Moral Development

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
the human life cycle, are "human constructions," showing how psychologists have adopted the "male life as the norm," which caused them to fashion their understanding of women "out of masculine  cloth" (Gilligan 6). After describing how the early childhood experiences of males and females differ in regards to gender identification, Gilligan, agreeing with Chodorow, argues that the fact that girls  do not have to separate emotionally or psychologically from their primary caregiver, their mothers, in order to achieve gender identity does not mean that women have "weaker" ego boundaries than  men (as postulated by Freud) or that they are "more prone to psychosis" (Gilligan 8). Rather, it means that girls emerge from childhood with a foundation for "empathy built into  their primary definition of self in a way that boys do not" (Gilligan 8). This estimation of female psychological development differs markedly from the way in which girls and women  have frequently been portrayed. The following examination of the film Mean Girls and Medea by Euripedes both substantiates and repudiates Gilligans findings concerning female psychological orientation. Mean Girls is  a film that addresses the modern social world of high school and its protagonist, Cady, is a sixteen-year-old who was home-schooled while her parents were living in Africa. Innocent  and sweet, she becomes increasingly corrupted by her exposure to "the Plastics," which refers to the clique of the three most popular girls in school due to their similarity  to Barbie dolls in appearance. The film substantiates Gilligans premise in the way that Cady is eventually able to relate back to her roots and her upbringing in Africa and  realize that she liked being the old, caring Cady, rather than the new popular, hard-hearted "mean girl" that she has become. It refutes Gilligans thesis in the way that Cady