Responding to increasing discomfort with the lack of diversity in studies of intimacy in later life, this seminar compares repartnering among middle class White British women and working class British Asian women in their ‘second phase of life’. bell hooks has written approvingly of the ‘second phase’ of life as a time, in mid-life after divorce and relationship breakdown, when women may move from a place of dependency and intimate inequalities towards stridently asserting their needs and desires.
This seminar interrogates these claims. We juxtapose two separate studies to break open questions of empowerment in the ‘second phase’ of life. Whilst narratives of self-discovery were common in both studies, our interlocutors’ different social positioning meant that investment in independence stemmed from distinct fallback positions. Aspiring towards independence did not necessarily translate to their intimate relationships, and women’s experiences of dating reproduced wider structures of inequality. Whilst dating experiences were refracted through distinct cultural sensibilities, narratives of respectability were pervasive. We conclude that divorced women’s navigations of repartnering in the ‘second phase’ of life are implicated in a range of intersectionalities and obdurate femininities.
Speakers: Dr Sarah Milton (Kings College London) and Dr Kaveri Qureshi (University of Edinburgh)