Women of Their Time: Generation, Gender Issues and Feminism (Cardiff Papers in Qualitative Research)

Using empirical evidence drawn from interviews, this book contrasts the different life courses of three generations of women, along with their experiences of, and attitudes toward, a range of gender issues and to the organized womens movement. Drawing on Karl Mannheim's argument that an individual's location in historical social structures acts upon their outlook or world views, it is shown that women of different ages do not share the same gendered life courses due to differing cohort memberships and this leads them to interpret, define and give meaning to gender issues and to feminism in varied and contrasting ways. In focusing on age, the book explores an important social division and dimension of "difference" between issues and feminism, it examines the neglected area of responses both to changes in the gendered life course and to key a instigator of those changes.