GENDER AND THE LIFE COURSE

Course Objectives:

This course aims to

• introduce key concepts and debates around the relationship between gender and the life course,
• expand knowledge and awareness about gendered experiences, norms, and representations, and
• offer life course as a useful analytical framework to critically understand people’s lives from birth to death

Course Content: This course aims to provide an understanding of gender, the life course, and the relationship between the two. It explores how experiences and representations of the life course vary according to gender. It begins with an overview of the life course, what is understood as the major events and phenomena over individuals’ lifetime, and how social theories of gender and gender identity may provide important tools in understanding these complex processes. The course then examines a series of concrete areas in which different gender groups are affected by culture, demography, economic and political stratifications as well as biological and psychological processes. Gendered experiences over life course will be explored through various areas, including childhood and education, experiences of the body, sports, reproduction, paid work, ageing, and dying.