By bringing together gender, women's experience of space and life course, Full Circles offers a critical perspective on all three. It shows how historical, cultural and economic contexts, changing fertility patterns, class position and mobility, state policies and personal motivation influence the geographies of women's lives, constraining choices and providing options. Full Circles describes the differences and commonalities in women's lives and expectations in post-industrial and developing countries from childhood to old age. Exploring the changing terrains of women's experience over the life course, the book shows how conditions in one stage affect opportunities in another. It highlights the importance of cohort, gender ideologies and the contradictory nature of women's roles in the home, the workplace and community, and examines how these are reflected spatially. Throughout, the aim is to reveal the critical intersections between space and time, place and person in women's lives, and the larger social relations with which they are mutually determined.