What is it about?
A longitudinal analysis that follows the lifecourses of women and men over a 42-year period
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Why is it important?
Both in popular understandings and in sociological research long-term lifecourses of men and women often appear as rational and orderly, structured either by individual plans or by key events such as the completion of education, marriage or occupational choices. This study, using date from Germany, shows that lifecourses, especially those of women, are much more discontinuous and irregular
Perspectives
The use of long-term quantitative and qualitative date sheds light on the actual twists and turns of the lifecourses of the people in the study. The broader significance of the study is to reveal the role of contingency and unintended consequences in lifecourses and in social processes in general.
Professor Bernd Baldus
University of Toronto
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Work, Gender and the Life Course: Social Construction and Individual Experience, The Canadian Journal of Sociology, January 1999, JSTOR,
DOI: 10.2307/3341394.
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