Women's Lifeworlds: Women's Narratives on Shaping their Realities

by Edith Sizoo (Editor)

Overview

Women's Lifeworlds explores the diversity and complexity of women's perceptions and reactions to their own 'lifeworlds' in their own words. Examining the changing meaning of 'place' in women's lives over time and across space, this book questions how women face, negotiate and shape the social space of their environment. Engaging personal narratives are presented by fifteen women of various age groups, from different cultural, religious, social and geographical backgrounds, from Mexican politician, Muslim psychiatrist, Finnish housewife to Indian guru and African rural woman. Writing about the lives of their grandmothers, mothers, themselves, their daughters or other close female relatives, the authors of these life narratives cross generational and cultural divides and share perceptions with each other. This unique inter-generational approach provides an engaging challenge to the generalised assumptions of how women in various historical and cultural contexts feel about womanhood, life, society, culture and religion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415171779
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/16/1997
Series:	International Studies of Women and Place
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Notes on contributors, Preface: women’s ways of shaping their realities, Acknowledgements, Part I Introduction, Part II The life narratives, Part III The findings, Index

Editorial Reviews

Explores the diversity and complexity of women's perceptions and reactions to their worlds. The 15 contributors<-->from countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe<-->each present the narratives of three or four women in their families, followed by their analysis of the narratives. Generally the narratives cover three generations of the contributor's family, so a wide spectrum of women's experiences both historically and geographically is represented. The book concludes with an essay covering the contributors' findings when they met to compare ideas in October 1994 in Brussels. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews