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

Abstract

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.

Reclaiming the Second Phase of Life? Intersectionality, Empowerment and Respectability in Midlife Romance

“…While feminist theory has celebrated this, as a 'second phase' of life, when women may move from a place of dependency and intimate inequalities towards more stridently asserting their needs and desires, empirical studies are more equivocal. This article departs from our earlier studies documenting the ever-presence of ageism and sexism in mid and later life romance, and how age and gender inequalities may be co-constituted by class and 'race/ethnicity' (see, for example, Milton and Qureshi, 2020) to break open questions of empowerment in intimate life. We juxtapose two separate ethnographic studies of middle-aged women's post-divorce moves towards repartnering, one with middle-class White British women and one with working-class British South Asian women, to ask whether the 'second phase' of life is really a time to reclaim power.…”

“…The women in our studies sought to blend their post-divorce independence with acquiescence, with passive feminine roles expected in dating, and concerns with reputation that were pinned to women's sexual respectability. Within hooks' feminist framework, these dynamics appear to be disappointing, but it is important to bring in wider insights from intersectional feminist scholarship, which critiques how dominant imaginaries about the revolutionary social mores of the baby-boom generation are deeply classed and raced/ethnicized (see Milton and Qureshi, 2020).…”

“…Skeggs shows how White, middle-class femininity is the silent norm, associated with respectability, and often works through comparing the self to 'less respectable' others (p. 98). As we have previously argued, the differentiation of class and 'race/ethnicity' is relational, operating through the affective aspects of class relations and racism, through contempt and distancing from various kinds of undesirable others (Milton and Qureshi, 2020, and see also Morris and Munt, 2019). Furthermore, in considering ageism and sexism as co-constituted by classism and racism, we have argued that there is an unstated White normativity at work in characterizing the baby-boom generation in terms of liberal feminist values and lifestyles (Milton and Qureshi, 2020, see also Smart and Shipman, 2004).…”

“…As we have previously argued, the differentiation of class and 'race/ethnicity' is relational, operating through the affective aspects of class relations and racism, through contempt and distancing from various kinds of undesirable others (Milton and Qureshi, 2020, and see also Morris and Munt, 2019). Furthermore, in considering ageism and sexism as co-constituted by classism and racism, we have argued that there is an unstated White normativity at work in characterizing the baby-boom generation in terms of liberal feminist values and lifestyles (Milton and Qureshi, 2020, see also Smart and Shipman, 2004). For example, studies of British South Asian women track how valued freedoms may be acquired through divorce -the freedom to earn and control money, freedom of physical movement, domestic arrangements, and social networks -while women remain constrained by gender and sexual ideologies expecting them to be contained in heterosexual marriage and exposing them to sexual predation as lone women (see Qureshi, 2016: 217-222;and also Guru, 2009).…”

“…Turning now to reflect on seeking out new relationships, for the women in Sarah's study, there was a consensus that the spaces they were used to socializing in now made it 'much harder' to meet single people at their age than when they were younger (see also Milton, 2017;Milton and Qureshi, 2020). The participants talked therefore about trying to (re) build a social circle so as to make it possible to meet other singles.…”