Brannen, Julia; (2009) Verschiedene Linsen zur Untersuchung der "Gender" / Multiple lenses in studying gendered families. In: Kapella, O. and Rille-Pfeiffer, C. and Rupp, M. and Schneider, N.F., (eds.) Die Vielfalt der Familie: Tagungsband zum 3. Europäischen Fachkongress Familienforschung [Family Diversity: Proceedings of the 3rd European Congress of Family Science]. (pp. 133-144). Barbara Budrich: Opladen, Austria.

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Abstract

A key narrative about gender concerns increased educational and employment opportunities for women. Another story is one of continuing social inequality among families with children especially in Britain. In many ways the two stories are connected since social inequality is fuelled by low education among some groups of often young parents who also have little in the way of employment record and who lack skills. A combination of lone motherhood and low income is commonplace making for a polarised pattern among women: between this latter group and the growing group of highly educated women in high status occupations living with partners who are similarly employed. In other words gender intersects with other important analytic cal foci such as occupation, social class, employment status, age, and ethnicity. A gender perspective does not rule out other key ways of making sense of the social world. Indeed gender needs to be integral to other perspectives that social scientists bring to bear in studying families. In this paper I will adopt four lenses which have been important for me in understanding the changes taking place in families. These will include a generational/ historical perspective, a global perspective, a life course perspective, and a relational perspective that concerns the way that family members relate to each other including children. Since I am an empirical researcher I will draw on a number of studies in which I have been engaged in recent years to suggest how important it is to take into account a variety of perspectives towards understanding gendered family life in a changing and diverse world.

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