1. Introduction.- 2. Understanding Body, Sexuality and Gender in the Life Course.- 3. Childhood and Puberty.- 4. Entering Womanhood: Marriage and Sexual Experiences.- 5. Participating in Womanhood: Being a Good Wife.- 6. Menopause and Body Image.- 7. Narratives of Resistance.- 8. Conclusion.
Elham Amini is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool, UK. Her work focuses on the gendered and sexual experiences of menopausal women, and her research interests include medical sociology, ageing, sexualities, and women's health.
This book offers an original empirical study into the gendered and sexual experiences of Iranian Muslim women going through menopause. Using a biographical lifecourse lens, it explores the processes through which these experiences are shaped by hegemonic gender norms, as well as how these women express their agency. Centering the voices of Iranian Muslim women, this book links sexuality, ageing, and the body to the matter of menopause, conceived here as a gendered, embodied and lived phenomenon characterised both by cultural constraint and by individual reflexive body techniques. By considering gender and sexuality as vectors of power with internal politics, inequalities, and oppression alongside embodied practice, the author shows how the life course provides a trajectory of sex and sexuality that routes both in time, space, social and cultural context.
Elham Amini is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool, UK. Her work focuses on the gendered and sexual experiences of menopausal women, and her research interests include medical sociology, ageing, sexualities, and women's health.