| Summary: | The subject of gender, as it emerged in late twentieth-century social demography, has commonly been approached as a potential marker of disadvantage, particularly as experienced by women. In the Indonesian case, at least, we have seen that, even where gender differences serve as powerful mechanisms of individual and group identity, intergenerational relationships and flows of support are guided by flexible network arrangements that in most cases secure support of both sons and daughters. There are, moreover, major differences in the way Indonesian cultures configure gender, which we have summarized and contrasted very briefly as preferential (for support from daughters, in the Javanese and Sundanese communities) and prescriptive (the Minangkabau maintain a powerful gender ideology emphasizing female lines of descent, inheritance, and family arrangement in which preferences regarding ongoing material support nonetheless rely on both sexes). In sum, gendered support, while important to older people's perception of their situation, and often in the patterns of assistance they actually receive, is not determinant of levels of support or of the diverse network arrangements by which family and community networks respond to elderly needs
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