Gendering Women - by Suzanne Clisby & Julia Holdsworth (Paperback)

About the Book

Led by women's life history accounts, this is an engaging and accessible account of how constructions of femininity fundamentally affect women's mental wellbeing through the life course.

Book Synopsis

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence Gendering Women is an engaging and accessible account of how constructions of femininity fundamentally affect women's mental wellbeing through the life course. Led by women's life history accounts of growing up and growing older in the north of England, this book shows how experiences of becoming and being a woman - in family life, education, employment, motherhood and situations of violence - both enable and erode self confidence and esteem. The challenges to women's mental wellbeing cut across age and class differences and have profound impacts on the material conditions of women's lives throughout the life course. This is in turn a driver of inequality that is often under-recognised in mainstream policy. Based on feminist and ethnographically informed research with over five hundred women Gendering women provides a critical link between gender theory and the lived realities of women's daily lives and will appeal to students and academics in sociology and social sciences.

Review Quotes

​ ​"A well written and timely book on the important issue of women's identity and mental illness, across the life course, which will interest those researching in diverse disciplines."

--Victoria Robinson, Sheffield University

"Utterly timely. Challenging discourses of post feminism, this book returns us to the voices of women on the lived realities of their everyday lives. Highly recommended."

--Kathleen Lennon, University of Hull

About the Author

Suzanne Clisby is director of postgraduate gender studies and a lecturer in social sciences at the University of Hull. Julia Holdsworth combines university-based research and teaching in the social sciences with research and community development work both in the United Kingdom and abroad; gender issues are central to much of this work.