ABSTRACT
Extent of gender role differentiation is relatively mild until puberty, when a sharp role differentiation takes place and lasts until about age 55, when gender roles either converge or reverse. Token high-ranking appointments for women are the order of the day, and make the removal of gender differentiation even harder because of the abnormal social and occupational roles token women have to play. The significance of gender sorting and age sorting, in their separate and joint effects, lies in the powerful levers they provide to every type of society for unequal allocation of opportunities and resources. Basic intellecting capacities are present very young in children. With industrialization there is an increasing restriction of the social space of the elderly, and a heavy loading of economic and social responsibility on a narrow age range. Death brings the lifespan sequence, with its differential sorting stations for women and men as they move from age to age, to an end.
