Women and Aging (PDF)

These are paradoxical times to be an older woman. As individual older women take the stage as role models in the arts and the public sphere, female elders as a group are marginalized as dependent, declining, and unimportant.

 

Women and Aging surveys the evolving sociopolitical landscape in an era still struggling with gender and age discrimination. This insightful volume recasts familiar concepts such as social roles, appearance, health, sexuality, and transition through the related lenses of empowerment/restraint and quality of life/well-being for a deeper understanding of the disparities that exist both with men and within their own gender. Two especially relevant questions emerge from this framework: how women over sixty are contributing to the current climate of societal change, and how these positive developments can improve the lives of older women as a whole. Featured topics analyze the wider implications of older women's experiences as family members, sensual and sexual beings, drivers of economies, and members of a diverse population worldwide:

 

• Older women, power, and the body.
• Older women, economic power, and consumerism.
• The impact of multiple roles on older women: Strain or enrichment?
• Older women, leadership, and encore careers.
• Sexuality in older women: Desirability and desire.
• Lesbians over 60: Newer every day.
• Clinical interventions to empower older women.

 

A significant advance in feminist research, Women and Aging brings path-breaking perspectives to scholars in women's studies, gerontology, psychology, sociology, social work, and human development, whether they study women who have overcome barriers or those who need support in changing the rules.

“This is an important book for scholars and students of gender as well as for scholars and students of the aging process, providing a critical summary of existing research as well as where existing conceptualizations and theoretical framings make or miss the mark for this important subgroup. … And it is easy to read, providing an international and interdisciplinary window in a decidedly unlabored fashion.” (Phyllis Moen, Sex Roles, Vol. 74, 2016)

“With its extensive current literature reviews, its superior writing, and its attempt to offer suggestions for empowerment and agency of older women, it is a rare find. As such, I strongly recommend that feminist scholars, gerontologists, activists, advocates and policy makers read and learn from this book. Professors teaching classes on sociology, psychology of women, gender, women’s studies, and gerontology would do well to require Women and Aging … as a primary source for students’ reading assignments.” (Carol A. Gosselink, PsycCRITIQUES, Vol. 60 (34), August, 2015)