A Midlands woman has started a major research project to provide a comprehensive view of older lesbian life in the UK.
The project, The Lives of British Lesbians Over Sixty, is being undertaken by researcher Jane Traies and will be based at the University of Sussex.
Traies is calling for volunteers to answer a questionnaire to help provide material for the project, saying: “We need as many women as possible to take part. If you are a lesbian or bisexual woman aged sixty or more, please help to make this national survey a success by filling in the questionnaire and encouraging your friends to do so too.”
The questionnaire asks about opinions and experiences and is completely anonymous and confidential.
Traies says of the project that: “This new piece of research aims to challenge the social attitudes which have made a ‘hidden community’ invisible, and to make their voices heard.”
Adding: “Although lesbians and gay men are now much more visible than they were twenty years ago - in public life, films and TV programmes - you could still be forgiven for thinking that older lesbians simply do not exist.”
For more information, email: jt222@sussex.ac.uk.