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 original 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 key theme running through the book is the need to reconceptualize partnership status, in order to understand the implications for women and men of widowhood, divorce and new forms of relationships, such as Living Apart Together (LAT-relationships). Another is the influence of socio-economic circumstances on how ageing is experienced and transitions are negotiated.

The book illustrates new ways of thinking about old age and indicates policy implications, especially concerning the nature of service provision for older people. It will change the ways in which social scientists conceptualize later life.

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

Sara Arber is a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Surrey.