Gender And Ageing: Changing Roles and Relationships

This book is a follow-up to Arber and Ginn's award winning Connecting Gender and Ageing (1995). It contains orginal chapters from eminent writers on gender and ageing, addressing newly emergent areas within gender and ageing, including gender identity and masculinity in later life.

Early work on gender and ageing was dominated by a focus on older women. The present collection breaks with this tradition by emphasizing changing gender roles and relationships, gender identity and an examination of masculinities in midlife and later life. A theme running through the book is the need to reconceptualize partnership status, in order to understand the implications of both widowhood and divorce for older women and men, as well as new forms of relationships, such as Living Apart Together (LAT-relationships). There is also an underlying focus on how socio-economic circumstances influence the experiences of ageing and the ways transitions are negotiated.

Written with undergraduate students and researchers in mind, Gender & Ageing will be an invaluable text for those studying social gerontology, sociology of later life, gender studies, health and community care and social policy.