Gender and Lifecycles

Young girls are kept at home to care for dependants and miss out on education, while others face sexual exploitation. Elderly women's health needs are ignored when their reproductive years end, and many face the economic and social marginalization which accompanies widowhood. This collection from development practitioners and feminist activists considers how age interacts with gender identity to create particular forms of economic and social marginalization, as well as different kinds of opportunity, for women and men in different contexts throughout the world. Contributors include Pratima Poudel and Jenny Carryer on AIDS in Nepal and the trafficking of girls; Sabina Raschid on BRAC's Adolescent Family Life Education in Bangladesh; and Rachel Slater on the life histories of Xhosa women during the years of apartheid in South Africa.