Aging is a woman's problem: Issues faced by the female elderly population

Olson, Laura Katz

doi:10.1016/0890-4065(88)90025-4

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…There is some empirical support for considering age and gender in terms of a double jeopardy, resulting in misery. Examples are how the longer lifespan of women, combined with social norms that women should have partners older than themselves, results in many older women living alone and in a weak financial position (Olson, 1992), and how middle-aged and older women in a financially vulnerable position have acquired that position through their earlier life course (Arber et al, 2003;Gunnarsson, 2002). Earlier positions as housewives or unmarried women with low wages, in other words characteristics of a gendered labour market, where traditional female work is poorly paid, result in a financially vulnerable position when these women get older.…”

Section: Age and Gender As A Double Jeopardymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Intersection of Age and Gender

Krekula

2007

Current Sociology

246

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This article discusses the position of older women in gender theory and in social gerontology. It shows how older women are made invisible in gender theory through the selection of arenas and themes, by model monopoly and by a lack of problematization of age. In the social gerontological field, older women have frequently been objects of research. However, double jeopardy assumptions have resulted in a perspective that foregrounds misery. Results from focus group interviews with women aged 75 and over, shed light on ageing as a process of development and on twofold bodily meanings, such as on-stage-body and off-stage-body. Thus, based on an approach of age and gender as intertwining systems, the article argues for a more complex understanding of the intersection of age and gender.

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Section: Age and Gender As A Double Jeopardymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Intersection of Age and Gender

Krekula

2007

Current Sociology

246

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“…Commonly, ageing is also expected to be more painful and more connected to shame for women than for men (Sontag, 1979, see also Calasanti & Slevin, 2001;Furman, 1997;McDonald & Rich, 1983;Olson, 1992). According to this double standard hypothesis, first presented by Sontag (1979), it is claimed that men are judged on the basis of performance while women are primarily evaluated according to outward appearances.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contextualizing older women’s body images: Time dimensions, multiple reference groups, and age codings of appearance

Krekula

2016

Journal of Women & Aging

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The article sheds light on older women's body images and problematizes assumptions that women's aging is more painful and shameful than men's aging since men are not expected to live up to youthful beauty norms, the so-called double standard of aging hypothesis. Based on 12 qualitative interviews with women from the age of 75 from the Swedish capital area, I argue that older women have access to a double perspective of beauty, which means that they can relate to both youthful and age-related beauty norms. The results also illustrate that women's body image is created in a context where previous body images are central and that this time perspective can contribute toward a positive body image. Further, the results show how age codings of appearance-related qualities create a narrow framework for older women's body images and point to the benefits of shifting the analytical focus toward a material-semiotic body where corporeality and discourse are seen as interwoven.

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“…A number of feminist gerontologists began to argue that it was no longer satisfactory to speak about ageing as if it were a reified phenomenon unrelated to particular individual bodies embodying particular identities. Such questioning first began in articles published in the 1970s and 1980s (Sontag, 1972;Olson, 1988), but taking a thoroughly gendered lens to ageing was primarily a phenomenon of the 1990s (Venn, Davidson and Arber, 2011: 72-3). This was most strongly highlighted when, in 1993, a special issue of the Journal of Aging Studies was published devoted to the new 'feminist' gerontology.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The cultural turn in gerontology

2015

Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology

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Aging is a woman's problem: Issues faced by the female elderly population

Cited by 9 publications

References 5 publications

The Intersection of Age and Gender

The Intersection of Age and Gender

Contextualizing older women’s body images: Time dimensions, multiple reference groups, and age codings of appearance

The cultural turn in gerontology

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