In Electra's Voice: Gilligan's Debt to Freud

C. Gilligan's 1982 book In a Different Voice was a seminal work in feminist theory and in the construction of a novel view of women's moral and social development. Gilligan tied personality formation, gender-identity development, and personal individuation to the child's relationship with the mother. From this stance she theorized that:

For boys and men, separation and individuation are critically tied to gender identity since separation from the mother is essential for the development of masculinity. For girls and women, issues of femininity or feminine identity do not depend on the achievement of separation from the mother or on the progress of individuation. Since masculinity is defined through separation while femininity is defined through attachment, male gender identity is threatened by intimacy while female gender identity is threatened by separation. (p. 8)

Gilligan then takes this separation/attachment paradigm as an organizing principle for a novel perspective on women's ways of being in the world—in moral development and in social relations. In children's play, for instance, boys are seen as elaborating rules and engaging in adversarial and competitive games like soccer and baseball, whereas girls engage in more cooperative games like hopscotch, where competition is indirect, rules are subsumed in relationships, and there is no win/lose polarity. These play structures are seen to evidence the results of the separation/attachment dynamics of child and mother, as boys further differentiate from the mother into individualistic achievement-oriented and rule-bound endeavours, whereas girls develop the sensitivity toward others and the empathy that allows them to maintain and develop a capacity for attachment in continuing social relationships.

Further evidence for the separation/attachment dynamic as a basis for gender differences is adduced from Horner's (1972) study