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Alte Frauen in der Bundesrepublik am Beispiel der BOLSA-Sozialdaten

Eine Korrespondenzanalyse nach Bourdieu

Abstract

In the historiography, older women in post-war West Germany have predominantly been depicted as passive, as embodiments of a contaminated past and hindrances to cultural change. This paper challenges these stereotypical narratives by investigating quantitative and qualitative social data from the Bonn Longitudinal Study of Aging (BOLSA) in the framework of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social inequality. The results of our correspondence analysis show that women aged over sixty led more active lifestyles than commonly assumed. They also compensated for their lower economic and cultural capital by investing in higher social and symbolic capital. This was particularly pronounced in the case of unmarried elderly women.