Developmentally, women are different from men. The claim has surfaced so often, it can no longer be denied. Whether the charted gender differences have been framed as inherent female defects in biology (Freud, 1925), feminine deficiencies in reasoning (Kohlberg, 1976), learned responses to a political reality (French, 1985; Schaef, 1981), the recognition of a distinct developmental voice for men and women (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, 1986; Gilligan, 1977), or cause for celebrating a new psychology of women (Miller, 1976), the theme is the same. Women construct their conceptions of themselves, their lives, and the world around them differently from men.

During the fragile early years of the Women's Movement, it was taboo to acknowledge any basic differences between men and women other than the most obvious biological ones. Equality between the sexes required a lock-step belief in what now seems a simplistic definition of equity as sameness. While we spoke of increasing human freedom by challenging stereotypic conceptions of men and women, we implicitly sold the male model of life and work as women's salvation from their second-class citizenship.

But the time has come to move beyond the debate of whether women and men are developmentally different and to focus more clearly on understanding the differences and their implications. Masking these developmental differences serves neither gender. We have begun to admit (Friedan, 1981; Marshall, Chapter 13) that the male model of work and success may be a dead end (and health statistics say that literally may be true).