Intersectional Inequalities and Intimate Relationships: Dating, Class and ‘Race/Ethnicity’ among Divorced Women in the ‘Second Phase’ of Life

TY - JOUR

T1 - Intersectional Inequalities and Intimate Relationships: Dating, Class and ‘Race/Ethnicity’ among Divorced Women in the ‘Second Phase’ of Life

AU - Milton, Sarah

AU - Qureshi, Kaveri

N1 - doi: 10.1177/0038038520909289

PY - 2021/1/1

Y1 - 2021/1/1

N2 - Responding to increasing discomfort with the lack of diversity in studies of intimacy in later life, this article explores the making of couple relationships among White British middle-class women and British Asian working-class women in their ?second phase of life?. We consider what intimacy means for women at this juncture in mid-life and how they traverse the socio-sexual spaces of dating post-divorce. We examine how women?s navigation of dating reproduces wider structures of inequality in intimate life. Talk of compatibility is examined as a veil for the classed and racialised habitus, and deeply implicated in the reproduction of social structures. ?Racial-ethnic? and class inequalities are co-constitutive of the gender and age inequalities stacked against older women?s efforts at repartnering. We therefore contend that repartnering is a matter of concern for intersectional feminism.

AB - Responding to increasing discomfort with the lack of diversity in studies of intimacy in later life, this article explores the making of couple relationships among White British middle-class women and British Asian working-class women in their ?second phase of life?. We consider what intimacy means for women at this juncture in mid-life and how they traverse the socio-sexual spaces of dating post-divorce. We examine how women?s navigation of dating reproduces wider structures of inequality in intimate life. Talk of compatibility is examined as a veil for the classed and racialised habitus, and deeply implicated in the reproduction of social structures. ?Racial-ethnic? and class inequalities are co-constitutive of the gender and age inequalities stacked against older women?s efforts at repartnering. We therefore contend that repartnering is a matter of concern for intersectional feminism.

KW - ageing

KW - class

KW - dating

KW - divorce

KW - gender

KW - heterosexuality

KW - intersectionality

KW - intimacy

KW - ‘race/ethnicity’

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85083657480&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/0038038520909289

DO - 10.1177/0038038520909289

M3 - Article

SN - 0038-0385

SP - 0038038520909289

JO - Sociology

JF - Sociology

ER -