Competing Discourses for Older Women: Agency/Leadership vs. Disengagement/Retirement

Abstract

Older women are targets of competing discourses. On one hand, they are urged to maintain or even increase their engagement, to translate their experience and seniority into leadership roles finally available to women after many years of struggle. On the other hand, they are reminded that they have earned the right to retire and rest, and are bombarded with messages reminding them to be concerned about the encroaching limitations and problems associated with aging. These competing prescriptions are most evident in the realms of work/career and physical health/activity, where either early disengagement or refusal to disengage can cause problems. Women who exit early from employment may face poverty and deprive society of important contributions; those who resist retirement may face stress, exhaustion, and missed opportunities for fulfillment in other domains. Women who stop physical activity as they age face a variety of health consequences; those who persist run the risk of injury. Thus, women's negotiation of these contradictory prescriptions requires a complex balancing act. Therapists can assist older women in finding the right balance by acknowledging their own biases, helping women both to acknowledge their internalization of ageist stereotypes and to recognize ways in which ageing may increase their empowerment by releasing them from certain constraints. They can encourage their clients to maintain and increase their power through physical activity and support women's resistance to debilitating messages by exposing them to a wide range of older women as role models.

KEYWORDS:

• aging
• employment
• fitness
• mental health
• physical health
• retirement
• women

Notes

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Symposium on Women, Power, & Aging, at Pace University, New York City, September, 2010.