"I Am not a Walking Uterus". Gender Norms and the Experience of Childless Women in Switzerland.

Switzerland has one of the highest rates of childless women in comparison to neighbouring countries. According to the life-course and gender perspective, the non-occurrence of transition no motherhood in women’s lives challenges their trajectory, norms, and identity. Moreover, transition to motherhood represents a social and corporeal transition. In my thesis, I explore the life trajectories of childless women by focusing on the role of gender norms which frame this expected transition throughout life trajectories. The overarching question I ask is how childless women experience gender norms. To answer this question, I conducted N = 56 in-depth, exploratory, semi-structured interviews of heterosexual childless women and their partners. I selected women without children who were settled in Switzerland of reproductive and post-reproductive ages. Including women from different age groups allowed me to capture the normative constructions across the trajectory of women’s lives. Adopting a thematic analytical approach, I show the embodiment of gender norms all along the life trajectory. My dissertation contributes to life-course and gender research by proposing an examination of gender norms and bodies (i.e., the materiality aspects of an expected life transition, or motherhood). My main findings are the perpetual processes of gender norms throughout life trajectories of childless women and the interdependence of age and gender norms in the social representation of the right moment to become a mother. Finally, childless women’s representations of their bodies as potentially maternal supports a discourse on the corporeal experience of motherhood while being childless.

Key words: female childlessness – life course – gender perspective – gender norms – body –

embodiment – Switzerland.