NANCY FONER

FOREWORD

This special issue on female hierarchies is a welcome, and significant, contribution to our understanding of age and gender. The articles make clear, above all, that age and gender hierarchies do not exist in isolation. They are closely connected in a variety of complex ways that have crucial implications for the lives of older and younger women alike. By now there is a growing literature on the way women's status changes, often for the better, as they grow older. Profound age inequalities divide women in many societies, with older women garnering privileges and powers while younger women, for the moment, lag behind. Less is known about the way these inequalities affect actual relations between older and younger women in the domestic arena as well as in wider community settings. Coalitions, Conspiracies, and Conflicts - this evocative title suggests the multifaceted nature of relations among women occupying different positions in the age hierarchy. Within the family and household, ties of affection, respect, mutual identification, and interdependence often draw older and younger women together despite the age inequalities between them. In the broader community, too, common interests and concerns frequently provide a basis for cooperation. Yet, as in any hierarchy, there are also typically suppressed antagonisms and tensions - and the potential for conflict. A perspective on age hierarchy, or inequality, emphasizes that older women's power and prestige depend in good part on young women's subordination. Younger women are frequently bound by cumbersome restrictions and at the mercy of older women's, as well as men's, demands and wishes. Age inequalities mean, too, that older and younger women, in certain contexts and situations, have divergent interests and may be divided by deep cleavages. Age hierarchies, of course, are not static and this collection reminds us that social changes can affect the delicate balance of power and privileges between young and older women and thus the very nature of their relationships. The articles in this issue show, in wonderful complexity, the way age inequalities play themselves out in relations among women in a broad range of settings. Certainly, they demonstrate the kinds of ethnographic, as well as conceptual, insights we can gain by considering that women have places in both the age, and gender, hierarchies of their societies - and the critical impact this has for women's alliances as well as conflicts. Department of Anthropology State University of New York Purchase, NY 10577, U.S.A.

Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology9: 117, 1994. 9 1994 KluwerAcademicPublishers. Printedin the Netherlands.

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