The research focuses on changes in the sexual lives of women over the age of 50 from a comparative transnational perspective. Despite ongoing liberalization, the sexual lives of aging women (particularly the active search for partners) remain stigmatized and mostly invisible, as aging individuals are considered to be asexual. Until the 2010s, research on third-age sexuality was mostly concerned with illness, sexual dysfunction (particularly male), and stigma. However, due to the exclusion of their sexuality from public spaces, as well as general population aging and health improvement trends, the sexual realm for women in post-reproductive age could constitute not only a space of discrimination and exclusion, but also a space for the construction of new sexual norms, models, and practices, by making choices, rethinking sexuality, and sexual experience. We are interested in how women over the age of 50 look for a partner, what experience they get, and how it is changing in their sexual life course. The focus of our research is their search for partners on the Tinder dating app (but not only), which is more oriented towards the sexual rather than marital partnerships. We are interested in what happens to the sexual practices of a generation that witnessed “sexual revolution” and has a Soviet gendered and sexual background as they get older, whether they can expand the boundaries of their sexuality and femininity under the influence of technologically mediated intimacy while dating on the Internet, and how this happens. In-depth interviews conducted in several geographical locations is our primary data collection strategy (15 in Russia, 47 in other countries).
Research coordinator: PhD student Maria Glukhova (EUSP Faculty of Sociology), email: mglukhova@eu.spb.ru