Les femmes et l'écart d'âge entre conjoints: une domination consentie. I. Types d'union et attentes en matière d'écart d'âge

Abstract

Bozon Michel. - Women and age difference between spouses : domination by consent. I Types of union and preferred age differences. How can age differences between the ages of spouses be explained ? Until recently, demographers have been mainly interested in variations in the average age difference when there is a numerical imbalance between the sexes. Results from two surveys carried out by INED on "The Formation of Couples" (1984) and "Family Situations" (1986), among French couples during the past 25 years have been used in an attempt to explain the very existence of age differences and provide a sociological interpretation. Differences have been studied within the general context of social differences between men and women, and of recent modifications in the start of conjugal unions. In this first article, it is shown that the wider variety of ways of entering into a union from mid -1970's onwards corresponds clearly to a wider range of age differences, which are smaller in the case of unions of single cohabitants, and larger in the case of first marriages without prior cohabitation. The age difference is definitely much higher for women who enter a union when they are younger. Young women, and especially the least educated among them, who are in the most precarious occupations, are those who manifest the strongest attachment to the male's domination by age, while young men seem largely indifferent to the age of their partner.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 75 citations exist upstream.