In this book, Sheila Greene presents a challenging new perspective on the psychological development of girls and women which emphasises the central role of time in human development. She critically reviews traditional and contemporary theoretical approaches - ranging from orthodox psychoanalysis to relational and post-modern theories - and argues that even those claiming to be focused on development have presented a view of women's lives as fixed and determined by their nature or their past. These theories, she believes, should be rejected because of their inherent lack of validity and their frequently oppressive implications for women. Greene's approach places primary importance on temporality itself and on the competing discourses on time, age and development which play an active role in the construction of the lives of girls and women. Essential but often neglected insights from the more compelling developmental and feminist theories are woven together within a theoretical framework that emphasises temporality, emergence and human agency. The result is a liberating theory of women's psychological development as constantly emerging and changing in time rather than as static and fixed by their nature, socio-cultural context and personal history. The Psychological Development of Girls and Women will be essential reading for students and researchers in the psychology of women, developmental psychology and women's studies.

"The Handbook of Girls' and Women's Psychological Health presents a contemporary view of psychological health for girls and women that integrates psychology, physiology, society, and culture. A range of 50 chapters integrates current research, scholarship, and practice on the risks and protective factors that influence women's health and well-being across the life span. Within and biopsychosocial framework, the Handbook explores mind and body, risks and resilience, research and interventions, cultural diversity, and public policy." "This Handbook underscores the importance of gender in the lives of girls and women developmentally across significant phases of the life span. Considering the importance of cultural context, this book illustrates how gender socialization in female development and behavior affects self-evaluation, identity processes, and the social roles that girls and women adopt. Its chapters illustrate how externally induced risks such as poverty, discrimination, and violence present challenges to healthy development. Significantly, the chapters also draw attention to long overlooked and compelling strengths and capacities that provide a firm basis for growth and health."--BOOK JACKET.

A groundbreaking work offering major new insights into girls' development and women's psychology. Just as important, this book provides women with the means of meeting girls at the critical crossroads of adolescence, of harkening to the voices of girlhood and sustaining their self-affirming notes.

"Should sound a national alert to society that even our most privileged girls still pursue normal femininity at great risk to personal and civic health." THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE Lyn Mike Brown and Carol Gilligan ask "What, on the way to womanhood, does a girl give up?" One hundred girls gave voice to what is rarely spoken and often ignored: that the passage out of girlhood is a journey into silence and disconnection, a troubled crossing when a girl loses a firm sense of self and becomes tentative and unsure. These changes mark the endge of adolescence as a watershed in women's psychological development and the stories the girls tell are by turns heartrending and courageous. Listening to these girls provides us with the means of reaching out to them at this critical time, and of better understanding what we as women and men may have left behind at our own crossroads. A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

This is the little book that started a revolution, making women's voices heard, in their own right and with their own integrity, for virtually the first time in social scientific theorizing about women. Its impact was immediate and continues to this day, in the academic world and beyond. Translated into sixteen languages, with more than 700,000 copies sold around the world, In a Different Voice has inspired new research, new educational initiatives, and political debate—and helped many women and men to see themselves and each other in a different light.Carol Gilligan believes that psychology has persistently and systematically misunderstood women—their motives, their moral commitments, the course of their psychological growth, and their special view of what is important in life. Here she sets out to correct psychology's misperceptions and refocus its view of female personality. The result is truly a tour de force, which may well reshape much of what psychology now has to say about female experience.