Young Women's Complex Lives and the Idea of Youth Transitions (From Youth Subcultures: Theory, History and the Australian Experience, P 61-66, 1993, Rob White, ed. -- See NCJ-162536)

• NCJ Number: 162545
• Author(s): J Buchanan
• Date Published: 1993
• Length: 6 pages
• Sale Source: National Clearinghouse for Youth Studies
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: Australia

Annotation

Because young women's lives involve a range of complexities and contradictions, research studies should rely on theoretical tools that provide the basis for dealing with the social world confronting young women in Australia.

Abstract

Research studies should take into account the transition of young women from childhood to adulthood and should attempt to reconceptualize young women's lives. In addition, researchers should make the specific and unique social position of young women visible and should acknowledge differences among young women. This involves a commitment to understanding multiple identities of young women and to investigating the simultaneous involvement of young women in a range of public and private domains. Likewise, researchers should appreciate multiple determinants of the life situations and the life chances of young women and should consider the interface between various worlds of inequality. In other words, feminist research should question the fact that age has been given such a privileged position in studies of young women. In order to understand the experiences of young women, a model is needed to theorize young women not only from the starting point of young people and the construct of women in general but also within the context of social inequality. Any analysis of this nature that ignores sexism, class relations, racism, and other forms of marginalization and structural inequality ignores the context in which young women are forced to negotiate their life movements. 26 references