University Professor Carol Gilligan Awarded 2025 Kyoto Prize

Carol Gilligan, University Professor and professor of humanities and applied psychology at NYU Steinhardt, has been awarded the internationally renowned Kyoto Prize for her lifelong body of work challenging the conventional developmental theories of the 1960s and 1970s to pioneer a new view for the “ethic of care.”

“Carol has been a dynamo in her field for decades, best known for studying the psychology of women and girls and their moral development,” says Jack H. Knott, Gale and Ira Drukier Dean at NYU Steinhardt. “Her scholarship continues to challenge norms, inspire critical dialogue, and elevate voices that have long been marginalized. This honor is a testament not only to her academic excellence but also to her profound impact on global conversations about gender and equity.”

Gilligan's landmark 1982 book In a Different Voice—called the “little book that started a revolution” by Harvard University Press—brought women's voices to the fore in work on the self and moral development, enabling women to be heard in their own right for the first time. 

More than 40 years later, Gilligan reexamined her initial ideas and arguments based on her more recent work in the field and published In a Human Voice, in which she states that her perspective about care ethics and the different voice really applies to us all. Gilligan’s follow-up work was called one of the best books of 2023.

“It is so moving to me that the Kyoto Prize is recognizing the importance of listening to women and girls—how they had been misunderstood and how listening to them led me to identify an ethic of care that still speaks directly to problems in the world today,” says Gilligan. “Listening to women and girls changes our understanding of morality and development, and it is heartening to me that at this difficult moment in history when there’s been a backlash against a lot of progress on issues related to gender, that my work is being singled out as worthy of this enormous acknowledgement.”

The Kyoto Prize is presented to individuals who have made significant contributions in the fields of science and technology, as well as the arts and philosophy. Gilligan’s fellow 2025 Kyoto Prize Laureates include computer scientists, astrophysicists, and engineers alongside stage directors, musicologists, dyeing and weaving artists, and more.

Gilligan and the other 2025 Laureates will be recognized at a Prize Presentation Ceremony in Kyoto on November 10, 2025, which will be attended by the Princess of Japan. The Laureates will then deliver their Commemorative Lectures on November 11, 2025, as well as attend and present at symposiums in San Diego, CA, and Oxford, UK, in March and May 2026, respectively.

Gilligan is currently conducting a new study called Breaking the Bargain with collaborators Tonya Leslie (Steinhardt PhD ’17, Teaching and Learning) and Naomi Snider (NYU Law ’15)—now a psychoanalyst and co-author with Gilligan on 2018’s Why Does Patriarchy Persist?—as well as graduate students from Steinhardt and NYU School of Law. The study interviews school-age girls in Boston and New York City on their choices around speaking and not speaking to learn about how women are taught to silence themselves to fit into and succeed within a patriarchal society.

“I have been so privileged to work with remarkable students throughout my career,” says Gilligan. “With Breaking the Bargain and the NYU Radical Listening Project, I couldn’t have done this work without the extraordinary contributions of these NYU students. They are truly remarkable.”