GENDER: Some implications of a contested concept and area of social life

Abstract

When ‘gender’ is considered in cultural gerontology, it is still common to focus on ‘women’, ‘men and women’ or ‘relations between men and women’. However, gender is just as relevant in relations between women, between men, between further genders, with hierarchies within genders, relations of gender, sex and sexuality and intersections of genders and other social divisions. In reviewing approaches to gender in cultural gerontology, we outline five broad formulations of theorising: gender based on sex; masculinity/femininity and sex roles; gender categoricalism, gender structures and structurally contextualised practices; poststructuralist, discursive and deconstructive approaches; and the material-discursive. Whilst contrasting, these positions overlap and intersect.