Man Plants, Woman Nurtures

In her contribution Lisa-Nike Bühring uses the results of her interviews with older German men to explore how conventional understandings of masculinity and femininity impact their identity construction in older age. She found that their perception of the sex binary as genetically predetermined was carried forward into older age. However, the interviewees also admitted that they had met women who displayed characteristics typically associated with masculinity, which could indicate a revaluation of factors which used to form the basis of the interviewees' male identity.