Genre et travail biographique au grand âge

This article investigates the gendered orientation in the subjective narrations and activity of people over seventy-five interviewed in their homes as part of the project “Gender, institution and social trajectories” (MSH Lorraine). The notion of “biographical work” (Corbin and Strauss, 1988) is used to show the extent to which the body is central for these elderly people in the narration of recent life-events. It also reveals how adjustments: « techniques de soi » (Foucault, 1984, 2001) are made on a daily basis in order to come to terms with bodily change. Men and women evoke the aging process in terms of diminution of capacities, but women are more likely than men to have integrated the idea of a pathological body. The activity affected by this bodily deterioration varies according to gender, but the people concerned use divers means to maintain activity or to regain control of their biography