Volume 1 / Athens 1999 "Biography & Gender: On the construction of social reality within female life accounts" by Sabine Schweitzer Review ofBettina Dausien, Biographie und Geschlecht. Zur biographischen Konstruktion sozialer Wirklichkeit in Frauenlebensgeschichten, Bremen (Donat): 1996 A common statement made by so-called oral historians is that there are differences in constructing and re-constructing biographies in terms of gender. However, until recently this assumption has never been investigated. It was based on the impressions of the interviewers. With the publication of Biographie und Geschlecht Bettina Dausien has changed this situation. Investigating the aforementioned differences by means of using and comparing the life accounts of married couples, the German sociologist defines a theory of the social construction of gender. For this, the book is an important and stimulating work. The author bases her approach on the tradition of "Biographieforschung" (research on biography). Since this approach is crucial to the understanding of the book, it shall be presented in detail. Following this approach, individuals are neither totally determined by given social supra-individual structures - such as culture, legal system, etc. - nor are they completely independent of them. In other words, they are by no means free and cannot 'tinker' with their biographies, nor are they constrained to a simple reproduction of social structures. Individual and collective subjects are enclosed in given structures yet at the same time they reproduce and transform them by acting. They are oriented towards given norms, without simply reproducing them. Furthermore, being agents, they construct social conditions and, within them, they construct their own biographies. Subjects are acting daily and thus producing reality, becoming active constructors of their social reality. In other words, "Lebenswelten" (life-worlds) are biographically constituted. Within this construction process, individuals have more possibilities than they can ever realise. They have to make choices. Even if the subjects are not always conscious of other possibilities they are exceptional resources for the formation process; we, as agents, have the possibility of realising the surplus of meanings of our life experiences and of using it for conscious transformation of references to ourselves and to the world. There consists limited potential for modernisation, which is part of our 'practical consciousness' (Giddens). This moment of autonomy is an essential part of each biography. Summarising, biographies are active attempts at construction by agents: they are 'made' by concrete individuals in concrete situations, with concrete reasons, and moreover, fulfill individual or collective functions. This process of constructing by means of acting has to be mirrored in the investigation of us as researchers. The claim is to re-construct the principles of the life constructions of individuals by means not of analysing only the observer's perspective from the outside. Rather, the perspectives of the subjects themselves have to be investigated and discovered. In order to do so, we need the biographical self-presentation of the agents which is explicitly done in their telling of their life stories. The life accounts used by Dausien are conducted in the form of the so-called narrative autobiographies (Sch¸tze 1978), which allows the interviewees to tell their life stories in the way they themselves consider to be right. In addition, this specific method of conducting interviews also allows researchers to focus on the interactions and experiences of individuals, including not only the consciously experienced and intentionally addressed aspects, but also the social conditions of biographical acting. The autobiographical narratives enable the reconstruction of the everyday, as well as the social world of individuals. Reference to one's past life is influenced by the individual's 'positioning' in social space as well as in time (Giddens 1984). Autobiographical narratives are in their origin related to the moment of their production, which influences the retrospective view of the past. Furthermore, they are directed to the outlook of the biographer towards the future, his/her life plans, hopes and expectations. Since the content of the narrations represents the complex construction of the past as well as expectations of the future, they mirror the social as well as the experienced reality of the individual. In this process, changing of references to oneself and transformations of life construction are included. The theorisation of these transformations is the strong point of the concept of biography. Biographical constructions are the complex and individual achievements of the subjects. Each life story recounts a special history and is related to a special life. At the same time both aspects are related to social relationships and structures, in short, to the "Handlungwelten" ("action's immediate environments"). This concept of "Biography" has been presented in all its details because it is the starting point for a comparison with the concept of gender. Dausien underlines the similarities between the social construction of biography and the one of gender: As "biography" is constructed by single individuals through their acting, so too is "gender". In this perspective, sex is not only analysed as a social institution, but also in terms of human acting. "Gender" as the social "sex" is acting: it involves dealing with given norms, referring to actions which are considered to be appropriate for one's gender category. Gendered day-to-day acting is a result of social belonging to a sex and at the same time reinforces the basis of this belonging. In short, in addition to social structures, gender concepts too can be reproduced as well as transformed by the subjects. This theory is exemplified by means of analysing life accounts of working class couples. The interpretation method as well as the main hypothesis are developed by presenting the first and crucial case, the life account of Mrs. Witte, and in comparison to it, her husband's life story. In the next phase the results of this case are compared to life accounts of other married couples. As a result, Dausien claims similarities in female life constructions. The author argues that not only everyday situations of women but also their biographical constructions - e.g. life plans and retrospective judgments, experiences and expectations, self constructions and modalities of relationship - are structurally characterised by the conflict of the "doppelte Vergesellschaftung" (double socialisation). They consist mainly in the difficulties of bringing together work and caring for a family. Moreover, women's life accounts are often characterised by a dependency on structural conditions which are outside of acting subjects. A valid and, moreover, crucial category for analysing differences in the life constructing process in terms of gender is seen to be the category of "relationship". First, how women and men refer to relationships within their own life constructions and second, the way they place themselves in relation to other individuals. As regards the first, women tend to reconstruct their lives by means of constructing a net of relationships. Men, on the other hand, reconstruct their lives mainly according to results, by referring to actions and events - a listing of data and facts - without referring to other individuals. Furthermore, women tend to place themselves in relation to biographically relevant agents of interaction; sometimes they even "disappear" behind the collective "we" in their life accounts. Whereas men present themselves more often as autonomous, active individuals. Finally, men tend to differentiate more clearly between their individual biography and the situation of others, while women try to coordinate and to link spheres of life. Whilst biographical constructions are individual acts with single, individual results, they are by no means the result of isolated individuals. People do their biographical work, not as isolated subjects, but in relation to others. In other words, agents constitute themselves in social relationships. Therefore, interactions between biographies are seen as another crucial category of analysis. In this approach similarities of wives' and husbands' biographies are described. They "fit" together, showing parallels in terms of thematic field and content. Investigating the logic of construction of biographies by the individuals, the author claims that a "biographical process of synchronisation" of the partners exists. Dausien differentiates three types of "relationship": first, a "together" or shared commonalty by means of sharing a common collective life-world. Second, the type of "one against the other" relationship, and finally, the "one for another". The last type, which includes the special form of delegation of one's own viewpoint to others is a main characteristic of female biographies, especially in relation to members of their families. These types of "relationship" are not chosen "freely". They are related to the concrete life story as well as to social structural conditions and furthermore, as Dausien's results show, to the dimension of gender. By analysing these differences between men's and women's life accounts, Dausien does not want to attribute 'specific' female or male characteristics or claim their empirical distribution. Rather, she is skeptical about constructing a dichotomy male-female. The only possibility for defining a typology is in terms of strategies for coping with, on the one hand, structures and, on the other hand, individual life plans. From this perspective, the strategies are significantly but not selectively distributed to the sexes. The existence of differences between sexes can only be explained by the gender dominated, differentiated structures of the concrete action environments: men and women are in their everyday lives confronted with specific experiences and expectations. By dealing with experiences and expectations, individuals are learning specific strategies of action. Those strategies are influenced by dimensions such as generation, regions, cultural milieus, in short, by "social space". Moreover, they unequivocally show structures differentiated by means of gender. And finally, they also determine the self - and world - construction of the single - male or female - individual. However, those structures are selectively acquired and in a unique way biographically combined by the individuals. Especially in the principles of constructing a "biography", differences between the sexes are evident. In other words, individuals construct themselves as women or men by constructing themselves as biographers. Concluding, Dausien argues that with this the social construction of biography cannot be divided from the social construction of gender. Moreover, subjects do not only construct their individual, gendered biographies with reciprocal reference. At the same time they are also (re)producing prototypes of male and/or female biographies. This act of constructing individual, gendered biographies - which is done by all individuals all the time - based on social and subjective structures, also includes the possibility of practical transformation. If we - as subjects of our own biographies - are the constructors of these prototypes of male and/or female biographies, we are also able to change them. BIBLIOGRAPHY Jeffrey C. ALEXANDER (1988): Action and Its Environments. Toward a New Synthesis, New York: Columbia University Press Peter ALHEIT (1994): Alheit, Zivile Kultur. Verlust und Wiederaneignung der Moderne, Frankfurt/Main, New York: Campus Regina BECKER-SCHMIDT (1987): Die doppelte Vergesellschaftung - die doppelte Unterdr¸ckung: Besonderheiten der Frauenforschung in den Sozialwissenschaften, In: Lilo UNTERKIRCHNER, Ina WAGNER (Eds.), Die andere H_lfte der Gesellschaft, Wien: Verlag des ÷sterreichischen Gewerkschaftsbundes, 11 - 25 Anthony GIDDENS (1984): The Constitution of Society. 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