Introduction

The investigations crossing gender and morality as a research theme have emerged in the field of Psychology of Moral Development, mainly from what became known as the Kohlberg-Gilligan debate (^{Silva, 2021}), which more than 30 years after its inception, can be considered one of the great theoretical milestones in the field and for the study of morality, driving the renewal of specialized literature. Several authors (^{Biaggio, 2007}; ^{La Taille, 2007}; ^{Franzi & Araújo, 2013}) point out that Psychology of Moral Development has consolidated itself as a field of study of Psychology, based on the studies developed by the American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987). Although it is the Swiss epistemologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) who inaugurates the cognitive-evolutive perspective in the psychological study of morality, Kohlberg was responsible, in the same perspective as Piaget, for the elaboration of one of the most important theories of the twentieth century about the phenomenon of morality and its relationship with human development. As ^{Biaggio (2007)} emphasizes, Developmental Psychology is a field of study and knowledge of Psychology that has the acquisition and transformation of abilities occurred throughout a person’s life as an object of study, but this is “[...] an extremely arbitrary division of Psychology, since all Psychology concerns the understanding of processes of behavior and thinking changes” (^{Biaggio, 2007}, p. 22). Therefore, with such a broad object, the field encompasses and incorporates several other areas of study. And among them is the Moral Psychology. ^{La Taille (2007 p. 11-12)} defines it as a field “[...] in which the psychic processes through which rules, principles and moral values are legitimized are studied, the moral meaning being that which is of the order of duty”. Thus, some of the theories developed within Moral Psychology are also shared in the field of Developmental Psychology. The Psychology of Moral Development nomenclature names a new field, constituted from these other two, from which the moral theories of Kohlberg and Piaget are derived. ^{Kohlberg’s theory (1992)} revisits ^{Piaget’s (1932/1994)} work on the genesis and development of morality, deepening it and proposing that morality, defined by the respect people acquire over the rules, is a continuous process in human development that passes through stages, in the same way as the piagetian cognitive stages. While for ^{Piaget (1932/1994)}, moral development, pictured in the book The Moral Judgement in Children, 1932, happens through moral tendencies from heteronomy to autonomy - respectively from the passage of an individualistic moral reasoning perspective to one of reciprocity and mutual respect -, ^{Kohlberg (1992)} proposes that this process is longer and more complex, presenting itself in three levels and six stages, being two stages corresponding to each level, in which the type of reasoning of a superior stage includes that of the inferior and exceeds it. The first moral level, called pre-conventional, characteristic among children, is Stages 1 and 2, where the reasoning for what is right or wrong is based on fear of punishment (self-preservation) or individual interests. At the second level, the conventional one, common among adolescents and adults and constituted by Stages 3 and 4, the reasoning is based on compliance with social conventions and rules determined by groups or authorities, seeking to maintain the prevailing social order. The third and final level, the post-conventional level, reached by a minimum number of adults, concerns Stages 5 and 6, whose moral reasoning breaks with the socio-legal context and is based on reciprocity and universalizable ethical principles, i.e. rules are only accepted if based on principles and moral values. For both Piaget and Kohlberg, moral development is ascendant and occurs towards an ideal of justice. However, in several studies developed by Kohlberg and collaborators in the 1960s and 1970s, low performances were found by women in relation to men, as Kohlberg himself (¹⁹⁸², p. 517) points out: “a few studies show sex differences, with late adolescents and adult males scoring higher than females. These include studies by Holstein [1976]; by Haan, Smith, and Block [1968]; and by Kuhn et al. [1977]”. Women, when evaluated by the model of levels and stages of the Kohlberg theory, reached only to stage three, where morality is characterized by the need to be in accordance with what people close to them expect, whereas men crossed them. An author with whom Kohlberg collaborated during these studies, the American psychologist Carol Gilligan (1936-presently), took a different look at these results of gender differences. In research she conducted with women and with moral dilemmas about abortion, ^{Gilligan (1977)}, although she found the progression of pre-conventional to post-conventional morality in women’s responses to dilemmas, points out that women’s reasoning seemed to differ from men’s. In 1982, ^{Gilligan (1982)} published the book In a different voice in which he opposes Kohlberg on women not reaching higher levels or stages of moral development. For her, women start from a moral orientation different from men, which prioritizes the care and well-being of the other - instead of justice, as in Piaget and Kohlberg’s universal model - an orientation that she called Care Ethics. ^{Gilligan (1982)} criticizes the emphasis on the male experience present in the samples and the considerations of both authors, and also concludes that Kohlberg’s theory would be inadequate for evaluating women. Contemporary of Kohlberg, Gilligan’s criticisms were answered by the author (^{Kohlberg, 1982}), who later admitted some limits in his theory: “this emphasis on the virtue of justice in my work does not fully reflect all that is recognized as being part of the moral domain. [...] the principle of altruism, care, or responsible love has not been adequately represented in our work” (^{Kohlberg et al., 1984}, p. 227). However, although Kohlberg agrees that morality is not restricted to the field of justice, as Gilligan claimed, he “disagrees that men and women follow different paths of moral development, or that his own theory has some masculinizing bias,” as Montenegro states (²⁰⁰³, p. 498). Gilligan’s criticism (¹⁹⁷⁷; ¹⁹⁸²), their reception by ^{Kohlberg (1982}; ¹⁹⁹²; ^{Kohlberg et al., 1984)} and their subsequent standings, as well as the involvement of the world academic community in this question of the universality of the Kohlbergian model, gave rise to the aforementioned Kohlberg-Gilligan debate. From this debate, a global research program was set up that sought to empirically test Gilligan’s hypothesis on the Care Ethics and to identify the evidence of gender differences in moral development, in the models of Piaget and Kohlberg (Justice Ethics) and Gilligan (Care Ethics) (^{Silva, 2021}). Based on this, the investigations that intersect gender and morality emerged in the field of Psychology of Moral Development. Besides questioning the universal validity of Kohlberg’s theory, Gilligan’s critiques ended up involving feminist criticism. As the author points out (¹⁹⁸²), Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s moral theories retain a masculinizing bias - as do several other psychological theories she also points out - as they are androcentric and sexist⁷ in their interpretations of human development and neglect to address and problematize gender differences. When investigating how children learn the rules of play, observing them separately by gender, boys and girls, while playing “ball” and “run and catch”, ^{Piaget (1932/1994, p. 69)} pointed out differences between genders and emphasized that even a superficial observation can reveal that girls: “have a much less developed legal spirit than boys”, and that they are “more tolerant and more easily satisfied with innovations [...] and that is where we can consider them as less concerned with legal development” (^{Piaget, 1932/1994}, p. 73). Piaget, therefore, divided his sample by gender, did not problematize it, and drew conclusions about the supposedly inferior performance of girls regarding moral development. As for ^{Kohlberg (1992)}, his theory was based on the research he developed in his PhD thesis defended in 1958. Kohlberg followed longitudinally a restricted sample for the task of validating it as a universal theory, the sample was composed only by the male public (84 white boys of middle class and age between 10, 13 and 16 years, residents of Chicago, United States) and, in the applicability of the theory, concluded that women achieve a lower performance compared to men. As mentioned, in the following studies developed in the 1960s and 1970s (^{Kohlberg, 1982}; ^{Kohlberg et al., 1984}) it was also verified that the female public presents a lower performance than the male in moral development, with judgments coming from lower levels and stages.

As ^{Gilligan (1982, p. 11)} emphasizes, both authors assume the male experience as the rule (androcentrism) and any difference that appears between women and men in the development path they trace is “generally considered to mean a problem in women’s development” (sexism). Her argument is that women start from a perspective that is not measurable by male criteria, in this case, women are not concerned with universal deontological principles - associated with men - but with their responsibility for the welfare of others, to care. Thus, feminist criticism of science, in which Gilligan’s critiques are included, caused epistemic ruptures by interrogating this positioning of Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s theories and, consequently, of the field of Psychology of Moral Development, making them be reviewed and searching for methodological and conceptual alternatives. In this sense, ^{Nogueira (2012}; ²⁰¹⁷⁾, ^{Narvaz and Koller (2006)} and ^{Prehn and Hüning (2005, p. 65)} highlight the impact “[...] that the assumptions of the Feminist Movement have caused in the theoretical production of Psychology, provoking a revision of its methodologies and concepts and leading to a new scientific approach [...] of analysis of the relations between women and men”. As feminist theorizations and criticisms “invaded” the various areas of scientific knowledge, dating from the second half of the 20th century, they generated an alternative epistemological perspective to modern science that was in accordance with its assumptions, that is, that was neither androcentric nor sexist: the feminist epistemology (^{Harding, 1986}; ^{Nogueira, 2012}; ²⁰¹⁷; ^{Narvaz & Koller, 2006}). From this, in science in general, “[...] as well as in the social sciences, and later in psychology, feminist claims and criticism of the family, of women’s oppression, and of their subordinate status, had important repercussions, both at the research and theoretical levels” (^{Nogueira, 2012}, p. 48). Regarding this article, however, the term episteme is used instead of feminist epistemology, since epistemology refers more to the process of building a new model of scientific knowledge, while episteme refers more to the problematization that Feminism can cause to the sciences and, in this case, to psychological science and existing models (^{Harding, 1986}; ^{Foucault, 2000}; ^{Lemos de Souza, 2017}). Episteme is, therefore, an interrogation of knowledge considered scientific and of its production process, refusing the position of a general or universal social theory of knowledge (epistemology). Therefore, feminist episteme can be defined as the knowledge produced by feminist theorists and the criticisms it generates regarding the iniquities and oppressions that surround the world and affect women and other vulnerable groups. However, as ^{Narvaz and Koller (2006, p. 139)} highlight, it would be more appropriate to speak of epistemes, “in the plural, since [from the feminist perspective] there is not one form of knowledge production, but several, based on different theories,” given the variety of feminist theories developed and the criticism they have brought to the sciences. In light of this, the American philosopher ^{Sandra Harding (1986)} proposes a classification of feminist epistemes into three types of epistemic positions: feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint, and postmodernist feminism. According to Piaget and Kohlberg’s moral theories, the feminist criticism from American psychologist ^{Carol Gilligan (1982)} is the most widespread and avant-garde in the field of Psychology of Moral Development. For ^{Nogueira (2017, p. 81)}, “[...] Gilligan’s stance is essentially one of feminist standpoint epistemology, centered on women and therefore essentialist”.

Despite its undeniable contribution, ^{Gilligan’s criticism (1982)} and her proposal for Care Ethics reveal the greatest fragility of feminist standpoint epistemes: they make it possible to disseminate essentialist ideas about gender, such as, in Gilligan’s case, the interpretation that the act of caring is a natural activity for women (^{Montenegro, 2003}), even if this was not the author’s intention. Other feminist criticism of Piaget and Kohlberg’s moral theories, with other epistemic orientations (^{Burman, 1995}; ^{Montenegro, 2003}), were also woven, as in the Psychology of Development in general (^{Miller & Scholnick, 2000}), although less widespread than Gilligan’s standpoint criticism (¹⁹⁸²). Yet it is not known what the panorama of research that intersects gender and morality in the context of the production of scientific research in Psychology of Moral Development, whether this intersection has been made beyond the Kohlberg-Gilligan debate on gender differences in moral development, or whether moral theories, when addressed in this research, are interrogated by feminist epistemes, and also whether they are interrogated beyond Gilligan. The research in this article is concerned with the recognition, organization, and intelligibility of this production, especially in the aspects of gender approach and epistemic review mentioned above. This research, already concluded⁸, had the objective of gathering, mapping and analyzing the production of research in Psychology of Moral Development, in Brazilian and international English language journals and in theses and dissertations, which have gender as themes from 1982 to 2019. This article presents the results obtained with the state of the art in international production. Thus, it aims to map, by the state of the art, the international production in English language periodicals of the Psychology of Moral Development that has gender as its theme.

Methods

The methodological path viewed as the most adequate for the desired mapping was the one enabled by the state of the art, for it was intended to investigate the production in itself, bring up the materials (articles, in this case) that constitute it and organize them in such a way to know their progression through the determined period and other relevant variables. According to ^{Ferreira (2002, p. 258)}, the researches denominated as state of the art have, in common, “[...] the challenge of mapping and discussing a certain academic production in different Fields of knowledge, trying to answer which aspects and dimensions have been highlighted and privileged in different times and places, in which ways and under which conditions”. One can find, however, a diversity of techniques and other strategies of bibliographic search that also share the goal of recognition of the production over a certain object of study. From this diversity of other search strategies, some can be highlighted, such as the state of knowledge, the literature review and the systematic review. Before beginning a discussion over the classification of these researches’ typology, it should be noted that there is no consensus on the classification of types of research, for, in different proposals of classification, in this endeavor there are innumerable “[...] authors that dedicate themselves to the categorizing and classification of research typologies. Literature is vast and rich” (^{Sá-Silva et al., 2009}, p. 2). Precisely for being innumerable, these classifications split distinct perspectives in literature regarding the methodology of scientific research. The literature review is a resource, constitutive and subordinate to bibliographical research, which searches for and selects these materials without specific criteria, instead acting as a preparatory phase for the “fulfilling of new research projects. It is via the literature review that the act of research familiarizes itself to already built knowledge of the research theme and identifies possible gaps that need to be fille in new research projects” (^{Mainardes, 2018b}, p. 306). The state of knowledge, in turn, presents more conceptual closeness to the state of the art. In both, there is the intention of verifying how research of a specific them has been evolving through time. According to ^{Mainardes (2018a, p. 4)}, the difference is in the fact that the “state of knowledge, overall, is a more ample research, which aims to understand how a theme has been approached through time. The state of art, however, can refer to the situation of research in a certain time span, for instance, the last decade”. The systematic review, however, is a more rigorous alternative than the literature review and the state of knowledge, for it aims to identify all the available evidence about a certain theme, comparing and summarizing the results in an explicit way (^{Mainardes, 2018a}), coming into contact both with the production, as well as the content of the materials that convey this evidence. This way, as mentioned, the state of the art has shown itself to be the most adequate strategy for the fulfilling of goals and criteria of research resulting from the present article. One could resort to the bibliographical review if there hadn’t been specific criteria outlined for this survey, which is not the case, to the state of knowledge, if there was the aim to recognize all production of the observed field, without delimitations, and to the systematic review, if there was the aim to only answer a question which would guide material surveying, and not the fulfilling of the referred outlined criteria. To clarify, the outlined criteria were: the outlined time period, from 1982 to 2019, the descriptors and search strategies chosen and the elected databases. One of the main differences between the systematic review and the state of the art, beyond the contact with the production’s content, is the delimited period, being that in the state of the art, there is a desire to know the state of the production in a certain period while the systematic review only concerns on answering the outlined question in its protocol, independently of the temporal order or relation between the surveyed materials. The relation in between the materials, mainly in regards to the time variable, is the main concern of the state of the art. That is why, it was most appropriate to utilize the state of the art for mapping of the production and, in regards to the analysis of its content, elect another methodological technique. In regards to the problems over the state of the art, ^{Maciel (2014, p. 110)} considers that the state of art researches receive “[...] little incentive from the fomentation agencies, in financing them, just like to the investment of the researcher in carrying on a longitudinal and extensive research, given the intercontinental characteristics of our country”. Beyond that, I agree with the author (²⁰¹⁴, p. 110) when she points that this “lack of interest also relates to the pure and applied research, once the state of the art does not present an immediate applicability, it’s only a statement of production”, that can be related to the little opening of specialized journals in accepting articles that disclose the results of researches that present this nature of production review only. In a state of the art, it’s not fitting to dwell on the content of surveyed materials, for that is not its goal, being it to outline a production panorama, mainly in regards to the time variable.

Procedures

So, for the intended mapping, the state of the art was chosen. It implementation consisted of two parts: the first part surveying scientific articles of international production in English and the second part mapping these articles, organizing them according to their progression throughout the time period 1982 to 2019 and other relevant variables. This delimited period chosen refers to the year of publication of the book In a different voice by ^{Carol Gilligan (1982)}, the theoretical framework and promoter of research on gender and morality, and the previous year of completion of this research. Four databases were consulted for the collection of the articles: Virtual Health Library (VHL), Journal Storage (JSTOR), CAPES Journal Portal and Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO). The search strategies applied to these databases, eleven strategies in total, were defined by joining descriptors concerning the theme of moral development with the descriptor “gender”, using the Boolean operator “AND”. The survey was carried out with the depletion of searches in each of the consulted bases. The following table presents the register of all the results, with which search strategies and in each database that were found, as well as shows the descriptors that constituted each search strategy.

Although 77 results were found in all searches, many of these results were replicated among the bases and descriptors employed, in addition to some results that did not intersect gender and morality and were therefore discarded. At the end of this selection, 52 different articles were found (N=52). Of these articles, 04 were only found in the JSTOR database, 27 only in the CAPES Portal and 09 only in the VHL. Of the duplicated articles among the bases, 07 were found both in JSTOR and in the CAPES Portal, 04 both in the VHL and in the CAPES Portal, and 01 both in JSTOR, CAPES Portal and in the VHL. After being located, retrieved and assembled, the 52 articles were organized in a research instrument (^{Silva, 2019}), according to ^{Penitente’s (2013)} indications, in which the following aspects of the materials were highlighted: year of publication, authorship, title of the article, periodical in which it was published, abstract, keywords, database in which it was found and with which search strategies it was found.

Results

Once the first part of the state of the art was concluded, the second part, the mapping of the articles, proceeded. The following variables of the articles were analyzed: year and periodical of publication, authorship, way of approaching gender and area in which they are linked. The following table shows 52 articles found according to their year of publication, the first variable analyzed.

With the arrangement of the articles over the 37 years of the delimited time period, Table 2 shows the scarcity of this production. Considering that the English language occupies the position of quasi-universal language in international scientific dissemination, that is, researchers from all over the world publish the results of their research in English when seeking the internationalization of their findings, it was expected that the production would be higher in terms of production volume. One observes that there are peaks and lows of production in some years of this period, but with no ascending or descending relation in the long term, and it reaches its apex in the mid-1990s, but it does not continue to ascend in the following years, declining and rising constantly in a characteristic oscillation. From then on, production does not exceed 04 articles per year, with an average of almost 02 articles published per year throughout the period. Thus, the beginning of the 1990’s was marked as the most productive interval of the international production gathered, with the peak of this interval, and of the whole delimited period, in the year 1995, with 04 published articles. In the following years, although production stabilizes at least 01 article published per year (with the exception of the years 2004, 2006, 2012 and 2016, with zero articles published), one can see the constant short-term oscillation in production, which in some years has a maximum of 03 articles published, but without the above-mentioned ascending or descending long-term relationship. The production of research on morality, however, is in general massive and consolidated, as shown by ^{Ellemers et al. (2019)} who in an extensive review of the literature found 1,278 empirical studies on psychology and morality in the period 1940-2017. As the present mapping is a part of all this literature, it is inferred, therefore, that the production of research on morality, when it addresses gender, is peripheral and marginalized in the field of Psychology of Moral Development in terms of volume of production. Regarding the journals in which the authors chose to publish their articles, these were mapped by the number of articles published in each one, at the same time that the most recent impact factor (IF), the most important bibliometric evaluation measure in the world, of each one of them, was highlighted. Table 3 presents this analyzed variable, with the journals arranged in alphabetical order.

From Table 3, and based on what was noted during the search of the impact factor of each journal, it should be noted that the majority of the journals chosen to disclose the articles are of American origin, predominantly related to the area of Psychology or Medicine and present a median impact factor, with the only exception of the journal “American Journal of Psychiatry”, with only 01 published article of the production mapped, which presents an impact factor much higher than the others, 13,655. Only one journal, “Developmental Psychology”, had 04 articles published from this production, two journals, “Journal of Business Ethics” and “Merrill-Palmer Quarterly: Journal of Developmental Psychology”, had 03 articles published, and another two, “Child Development” and “Ethics”, had 02 articles published. The rest of the journals had only 01 article published in each. It is worth mentioning that several international journals outside the U.S., whether from countries with English as the official language or not, also publish articles in English, however, the preference seen in this production is the publication of articles in U.S. journals. The subsequent variable considered for the mapping was the articles’ authorship. Thus, the articles were distributed according to their authors in order to show those with more publications of the amount gathered (N=52), if there is this relationship of predominance of an author with more published articles and others with fewer publications, and the names of these authors, if male or female and etymological origin that suggests, respectively, their gender and nationality. Table 4 depicts this mapping.

Altogether, 105 different authors were identified from the 52 articles in the mapped production, with an average of 02 authors for each article. Thus, the production was not very concentrated on certain authors, and most of the names cited have only one article of their authorship that intersects moral development and gender as a subject of research. The presence of names of various etymological origins, such as Asian and Hispanic names and surnames was verified, although those of Anglo-Saxon origin were found in greater numbers.Of the 105 authors, only six presented more than one article of his authorship: Nancy Eisenberg, Owen J. Flanagan, Silvia H. Koller, Beverly Kracher, Dennis L. Krebs, and Michele Smith Reimer, with 02 articles each. It was found that these authors are also of American origin in their majority, with only Silvia Koller of another nationality, the Brazilian.Regarding the way gender is approached in the articles, this variable was analyzed in order to know how gender appropriation and incorporation occurs in these researches, and more specifically how it is related to moral development. To define the gender approach, the title and abstract of the articles were considered. First, it was found that all 52 articles approach gender as a research theme, as required to be selected by the previous stage of the state of the art, although in some cases gender was also treated as a variable - gender as a variable refers to a finding or perspective of analysis of a certain research, but that does not necessarily have it as theme, that is, as its object of study. Of the 52 articles, 49 deal with gender in their investigations from the issue of gender differences, 38 articles (73.08%) deal with gender differences in moral development, in the models of Kohlberg (Justice Ethics) and Gilligan (Care Ethics), while the other 11 articles (21.15%) deal with other aspects of morality. In these articles, sometimes marked by gender essentialisms, we try to follow the male and female perspectives in the respective psychological processes they investigate, generally rescuing the Kohlberg-Gilligan debate for empirical verification, in which they use instruments to measure the development of moral judgment and other methods of collection, or for theoretical discussion of this issue. Gender was addressed in other ways in only 03 articles (5.77%), which related gender and morality, respectively, from the analysis of stories that involve gender relations in the process of moral formation, from the discussion of health professionals’ experiences on ethical and gender issues, and from the discussion of transgender experience and moral problems involved. The last variable considered relevant for the mapping of national articles was the area in which the articles are linked. Although they deal with gender and morality, not all investigations dealt with in these articles start primarily in the field of Moral Developmental Psychology. Thus, part of the 52 articles corresponded to investigations also linked to other areas of knowledge, such as Human Sciences, from Education, Philosophy, Law, etc., and also Biological Sciences, besides other fields within Psychology itself. Because of this, the distinction of the articles according to the “primary” fields - as it was called - in which they are linked was understood as important. For this, the journal in which the article was published and the research design that the article conveys was used as a reference (mainly considering the aspects covered, objective, theory that underlies it and the methodology used). The graph represented by the figure below presents this distinction.

As shown in Figure 1, the diversity between the primary areas and fields that the articles are linked to is verified, with 08 different areas/fields in total. As expected, the field of Psychology of Moral Development predominates, with 25 articles (52%), followed by the other fields of Psychology, with 09 articles (19%), and by Biological Sciences and Health, with 07 articles (15%). In smaller numbers, but confirming the diversity of primary areas/fields, are Moral Philosophy, with 03 articles (6%), Administration, with 01 article (2%), Social Sciences, with 01 article (2%), Information Technology, with 01 article (2%), and Theology, also with 01 article (2%). It is noteworthy that the production of research investigated corresponds, in fact, to the production of the Psychology of Moral Development, but it does not necessarily have it as its field of origin, since the use of moral theories and the construct of moral development in the cognitive-evolutionary perspective, is not limited to purely psychological investigations. In other words, the intersection of gender and morality is not exclusive to the field in question, since, as demonstrated before, it is also a topic of interest to other areas and fields of study and knowledge. Even so, the articles that depart from it as a primary field are the majority to the detriment of other fields and areas of knowledge.

Source: Research data

Figure 1 Number of articles found in the international production in English of Psychology of Moral Development in intersection with the gender theme, by subject area and field of studies and knowledge that are primarily linked, between 1982 and 2019. 

Discussion and final considerations

Through the mapping exposed so far, carried out from the implementation of a state of the art, some results on the production of international research in Psychology of Moral Development could be evidenced and, thus, reveal what was sought to answer regarding the state of intersection of gender and morality as a research theme in this production. First, the scarcity of articles was observed, concluding that the intersection in question is barely realized. This finding was surprisingly received, since English is the almost universal language in the international scientific community and even native researchers from other languages publish in English so that their findings can be internationalized. Surveys such as that of ^{Ellemers et al. (2019)} attest to this inference that English language production in the field of Developmental Psychology is indeed abundant and that the moral theories of Piaget and Kohlberg remain high in this production. As mentioned above, however, this discrepancy with the production portrayed here is explained by the fact that only a part of all this literature on Psychology of Moral Development has been mapped. Thus, the production of research on morality, although consolidated, when it addresses gender, is peripheral and marginalized in terms of production volume, as ^{Lemos de Souza (2017)} and ^{Narvaz and Koller (2006)} emphasize on the marginalization of gender also occur, respectively, in the production of the field of Developmental Psychology and Psychology in general. Considering the limited time period of the last 37 years, since the Kohlberg-Gilligan debate erupted (^{Silva, 2021}), first in the United States and then in the world, the production on gender and morality reached its prominence in the mid-1990s. However, with its continuity in the following years in a volume similar to when it began. Also, no other ways of approaching gender other than through gender differences (n=49; 94.23%) were seen in the articles of this production, mostly linked to the Kohlberg-Gilligan debate research program, with rare exceptions (n=3; 5.77%). Considering that gender differences in moral development are a research topic that often reiterates gender essentialism, there seems to be no impact from postmodern feminist epistemes (^{Burman, 1995}; ^{Montenegro, 2003}) in Psychology of Moral Development, which could make it approach and think about gender in other ways, even though this type of essentialist research is supported by empiricist and standpoint feminist epistemes (^{Harding, 1986}; ^{Nogueira, 2012}; ²⁰¹⁷). Besides the predominance of authors and periodicals of American origin in the constitution of this production, it was verified that the intersection of gender and morality is not exclusive to the field in question, being also a topic of interest to other fields and areas of knowledge. Therefore, this intersection occurs more in the sense of the Psychology of Moral Development for gender than the opposite, that is, in their investigations, “researchers of morality” approach gender more than “researchers of gender” approach morality. In short, it was concluded that the mapped production does not seem to have progressed over the last 37 years, both in terms of production volume, which was scarce, and also in terms of the diversity of ways in which gender is addressed, where gender differences prevail, and without more diversified global participation, with the predominance of US authors and journals, although production is also linked to other fields and areas of knowledge. In addition, other articles already published (^{Silva, 2020}; ²⁰²¹) and in the publication process seek to disseminate the other results obtained from the research resulting from this article, in relation to the Brazilian national context of production and also to the epistemic ruptures provided by feminist criticism. The findings of this latter will provide further elucidation regarding the impact of feminist epistemes on Psychology of Moral Development.

In the Brazilian national context, the results were different from those exposed here, whose production volume was even lower than the international one. Based on these results, the present author developed his own Research Program, which is in progress, entitled Diffusion and state of the ideas of Lawrence Kohlberg and Carol Gilligan in Brazil (1970-2020), with a forecast duration for the next few years. This program investigates the dissemination of Kohlberg and Gilligan’s ideas in the Brazilian field of Psychology of Moral Development. Finally, it should be noted that the present mapping refers to the state of production as it currently stands, and in the future it may be changed and new mappings will be necessary. As ^{Ferreira (2002)} points out, the research production is continuous, unstable, with a mutability characteristic, as seen with the articles arranged according to their indecency along the delimited period. Perhaps, with other descriptors related to gender issues (such as “sex”, “body”, “femininity”, “masculinity”, etc.), more articles from this production that intersect gender and morality can be found, although the use of these descriptors escapes the proposal of our research, which was to investigate the incorporation of the category of gender itself in this production, that is, gender as theme and not as variable. Therefore, this is another suggestion of a proposal for future research.