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

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.