ABSTRACT
Gender is consolidated through the course of a lifetime, as ideas about gender difference and the physical changes of the lifecycle are brought together in the cultural definition of the lifecourse. Through the metaphors of gender, time and space, the lifecycle is given specific meaning. This chapter examines how gender is performed at different scales and in distinctive settings to create personal identity, cohesion of age groups and vital connections between generations. Here ‘performance’ conflates the repetition of everyday tasks and time; gendered learning through children’s play; the theatrical performance of rites of gender conferment; and the performance of life itself, as the gendered body is transformed by age.
