Three Generations, Two Genders, One World: Women and Men in a Changing Century

THIS BOOK USES material derived from empirical data collected in nine countries as part of the Commonwealth Youth Project. The editors are two geographers who worked with the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Gender and Youth Affairs Division to compile the social histories collected by young people in the different countries into a comparative framework. The students who were the original data collectors interviewed members of three generations in their own communities to discover how concepts of gender and the positions of men and women have changed over time.

The editors worked with the raw material from the interviews and compiled the findings into summary chapters for each country – St Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Malaysia, the Solomon Islands, Pakistan, Cyprus, New Zealand, Canada and Zimbabwe. The data have been organized according to three topics which appear in each chapter:
· gender roles and relations;
· marriage, family and fertility;
· education and work.

Within these categories, the aspects of socialization and childhood, parenthood and parenting, sex and sexuality, courtship and marriage, fertility and family organization, and employment patterns are developed as the data permit. In addition, each chapter is introduced with a country profile and methodological discussion and ends with a summary conclusion and brief recommendations on appropriate policy measures to increase gender equity.

The country chapters draw on other data, as well as from the studies. The country profiles in particular utilize measures such as GNP and the Human Development Index, the Gender Development Index (GDI), and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to provide a comparative basis for the study. Yet comparability is not strictly possible because of the diversity in the ways in which the samples of students (mostly fewer than 100) were drawn within the countries as well as the diversity in the ways in which they conducted the research. Furthermore, the great cultural and economic differences between countries, and between the social and economic levels of people in the samples, meant that there was no possibility of representative comparisons between the groups studied. The methodology used is essentially qualitative, based on exploring what men and women think and say about local constructions of masculinity and femininity, drawing on perspectives from different age groups or generations to examine change over time. Direct quotations from respondents are used to illustrate gender characteristics and behaviours as perceived by the different generations, and about how they are changing.

The study concludes that progress towards greater gender equality has been made in a wide range of spheres and places, but that inequalities remain. Women’s expanded roles in economic life and decision making are associated with urbanization and the shift from an agricultural to an industrial or service economy in several countries. Common policy recommendations address household work, education and different forms of family organization.