ABSTRACT
Explaining how social inequalities interact with sexual orientation, gender identity and life courses has been a permanent interest in several fields of study and activism. In such in-depth engagement, conceptualisations are diverse and evolve continuously. The interest in building bridges between these fields of study requires challenging implicit associations, mechanic causal relationships or assumed intersections. A review of different approaches to study the interconnections between social inequalities, gender identity and sexual orientation shows the mutual constitution of social divisions that affect the lives of individuals and collectives in dissimilar ways. Gender identity and sexual orientation interact with trends for social changes and with social structures of class, age and violence to create a diverse landscape of gendered and sexualised life courses. In order to move forward, life course studies need to challenge their implicit gender dualist and heteronormative assumptions and discuss core concepts from a gendered and sexualised perspective. However, inequalities should be not only a topic of interest but a matter of concern in knowledge production. Scholarship on life courses can benefit from discussions on inequalities and hierarchies extensively developed in critical studies on gender and sexuality and on the knowledge produced in the Global South.
