In addition to sponsoring academic research, Murphy said the center will work on current educational issues, recommending curriculum changes to help boys and girls and giving seminars for classroom teachers on how to work with boys and girls.

Murphy said he will form a search committee this spring to fill the new endowed chair in Gilligan's name. He said a candidate should be found in time for the 2002-03 academic year.

Fonda's gift follows a speech she delivered last year calling for the GSE to establish a comprehensive program to study why boys and girls develop differently.

Fonda said she first learned of Gilligan's work in 1985, when feminist writer Gloria Steinem gave her a copy of In a Different Voice, a celebrated book on female psychology.

But only in the last couple of years, Fonda said at a press conference, did she come "to understand the effect that gender roles have had on me."

"Everywhere I go, gender norms impact the healthy development of young people," she added.

In an interview, Fonda said she blames the expectations on men and women for many hardships, such as her own eating disorders, her father's unhappiness and her mother's suicide.

She acknowledged that talk of "internalizing gender norms" could seem odd for a woman who starred as the sexy heroine in 1968's futuristic movie Barbarella.