Approximately 30 years ago, Dr. J. Dianne Garner had the vision to start a journal that focused on the health and well-being of women as they age. The Journal of Women & Aging debuted in 1988 and was initially published by Haworth Press. As of 2009, the current publisher is Routledge, a member of the Taylor and Francis Group. This multidisciplinary journal quickly became a resource for researchers and practitioners nationally and internationally. Dr. Garner continued to serve as the editor for the journal well beyond her retirement from the Social Work Department at Washburn University in 1998 where she served as Department Chair and former Director of the Center on Gerontology. I would like to personally thank Dr. Garner for her mentorship and for the opportunity to work with the Journal in the editorial capacity. She has provided excellent service to the journal and left us with an outstanding legacy.
Thank you also to the editorial board who has worked diligently in supporting the journal’s work. You are all ambassadors for the journal’s mission and represent the breadth of scholarly work described in the field of women and aging. The editorial board is key to the journal’s success, and I am honored to be among such a distinguished group of colleagues.
One significant change you will notice for our journal is our transition to an online submission and review system. I encourage you to visit our website to learn more about how to access our online submission portal. I view the editorship role as an opportunity to mentor authors by providing useful feedback to develop and sharpen their scholarly tools. I aim to position the journal so that its identity continues to be refined while embracing a perspective on scholarship that promotes excellence. The journal, as I see it, has a history of offering a forum for multidisciplinary views on women and aging that is highly valued by our readership and our contributors. We will continue to strengthen our position through soliciting proposals for special issues and other collection of scholarly contributions.
This issue features a range of topics about the life of older women and the intersection of aging with physical activity, gender roles, caregiving, fertility, and public health concerns stemming from psychological distress to falls (a leading cause of injury and death in older Americans). In A mixed-methods investigation of successful aging among older women engaged in sports-based versus exercise-based leisure-time physical activities, the authors consider qualitative responses of women ranging in age from 60-92 years old. This mixed-methods study adds to our understanding of the qualitative experiences exercise-based activities bring to the participants. Another article explores differential gender roles among couples. This is not a new topic in the field of aging. However, the question of how health influences differences in gendered roles reflect the intersectionality of gender roles and health in Somebody has to dust! Gender, health, and housework in older couples. The remaining articles explore the intersections of economics and women—captured in the articles Impact of Demographic Variables on Women’s Economic Empowerment: An Ordered Probit Model and Grandparents Providing Care for Grandchildren and Employment Status of Grandparents in South Korea; fertility and health—captured in the article Female fertility history and mid-late life health—Findings from China; and psychological distress and risk of falls—captured in the article Serious Psychological Distress, Sex and Falls among the Elderly. The work represented here has implications for a diverse group of women in a variety of roles, and the diversity of the contributing authors’ disciplines allows us to affirm our mission as a journal that engages multidisciplinary research in the service of women and aging.