Intersectionality and the role of the lifecourse in older women’s lives

When reading and writing about place and older women, questions often come to mind, among them: how do we capture the layered experiences of older women’s lives? What are the characteristics that intersect or work together to impact women’s overall health and other outcome measures? And what is the role of social structure or structural societal and historical elements contributing to women’s varied experiences of aging?

The articles compiled in this issue were selected because they each address these particular themes in the research about older women. Many of the articles build on Kimberlé Crenshaw’s and Patricia Hill Collins’ concept of intersectionality for older women. As Crenshaw (2017) explains, “intersectionality is the lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LBGTQ problem there. Many times, that framework erases what happens to people who are subject to all of these things” (p. 1). I argue that these intersecting structures and identities must also incorporate age as a category (Mitra and Weil, 2016; Weil, forthcoming). As author Natalie Byfield suggests, intersectionality “allows researchers to reveal the underlying categorical boundaries such as race, class, gender, and age that are constructed as interlocking systems of oppression and must be negotiated as people (who are raced, classed, and gendered) navigate those boundaries as they move through the lifecourse” (in Mitra & Weil, 2016, pp. 48–49).

The articles curated in this issue also add in another vital lens for research about and with older women, namely adapting Glen Elder’s (1998) lifecourse perspective that looks at linked lives and the way that individual lives are bound within historical, temporal, societal, and cultural contexts. The approach suggests that we examine multiple identities, roles, and statuses of older women simultaneously. A lifecourse perspective integrates both a micro or individual level of analysis with macro or societal and structural-level components. The lifecourse perspective reminds us that we need to look at older women’s lives in both an individual sense and also within the advantages and disadvantages of the time and place in which one lives and their intersectional characteristics.

Combining an intersectional and lifecourse approach requires that we use various research designs and theoretical underpinnings as tools in unison as well as placing research in the context of societal structure. Older women’s lives are layered and multi-leveled, and the goal of this issue is to capture and reflect this experience through the articles highlighted within it.

Hamiduzzaman et al.’s (2021) article, “When I suffer from fever, I eat mangos”: Determinants of health seeking beliefs and behaviors of rural older women in Sylhet, Bangladesh,” applies socioecological theory to address how power relationships impact health-seeking behaviors for older women in rural Bangladesh which they define as a lower middle-income country (LMIC). They bring to light that these health-seeking behaviors result from both structural forces (such as poverty, lack of access to education, gender discrimination, and cultural and societal norms, etc.) and personal ones (such as mistrust of the medical community or preferred self-care practices) while being embedded in community and even social-justice norms. Interviews with rural older women and health professionals make evident the levels of intersection in the women’s lives. As these researchers suggest, without such acknowledgements the wide range of health determinants and behaviors can mistakenly be reduced to the level of the individual woman.

Three articles offer examples of how an intersectional lens can improve the way we conduct research about, and with, older women. The first, by Foster et al. (2022), “But…I survived”: A phenomenological study of the health and wellbeing of aging Black women in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada,” demonstrates how race is both a constructed identity but also represents a system of intersectional events across one’s life course that impacts health. They suggest while at times, race may be reified in the literature, we can also represent women living racialized lives and experiencing racism amongst other isms. As Foster et al. (2022) suggest: “The intersectional lifecourse perspective provides an opportunity for a more integrated analysis of the interplay between identity categories, individual chronological life events and the impact of institutions, policies, and broader histories and systems that shape identities over a lifetime” (p. 4). Bhatta et al.’s (2022) article, “The intersection of race and financial strain: The pain of social disconnection among women in the United States,” adds in the role of the COVID-19 pandemic in exposing the joining of race/ism and financial strain in relationship to loneliness. They show how the “precariousness” of women who identify as Black and of lower socio-economic status before the pandemic was weakened even further during it owing to fewer resources and social contacts. As the authors explain, it is the “individual identities and social structure that combine through racialization and gendering in systems of racism, patriarchy, and capitalism resulting in combined disadvantage” (p. 3). Lastly, Freeman’s (2022) article, “African-Caribbean women ageing without children: Does African-Caribbean culture and religious identity shape their experiences?,” combines the experiences of not having children for older women of African-Caribbean descent and the role of cultural and religious expectations for having children. She also invites the reader to consider the ethnic diversity of the African-Caribbean community and the need to acknowledge the role of colonization (along with its infusion of cultural and religious practices) and how slavery contributes to present day culture – when researching family life/expectations, pronatalism, and religious and gendered identities.

Several articles in this issue expand upon intersectionality or layered aspects of caregiving, Muñoz Rascón et al. (2021), in “Self-management of chronic disease in Latina kinship caregivers: An integrative review,” use a review format to broaden the idea of caregiving. They show by way of their literature review that for Latina caregivers in kinship caring models, factors like self-management of chronic diseases often work hand in hand with the struggle for familial caregiving’s perceived norms. The interplay of these lived conditions has what the authors call a “ripple effect” within the family system (p 14). Thorsen and Johannessen’s (2022) article, “How gender matters in demanding caring for a spouse with young-onset dementia. A narrative study,” makes the reader question how, oftentimes, we look at caregivers of dementia with a broad brushstroke when in reality the caregiver and the person receiving the care may have unique combinations of characteristics. In this article, researchers looked at wives who were providing care for persons who had young onset dementia, occurring in persons less than 65 years of age. Additionally, they raised the issue of how frontotemporal dementia presents itself differently than other forms. As the authors note, persons with young onset frontotemporal dementia tend to have behavioral problems and also personality changes, so much so that they will lose the ability to solve problems and have disturbances in verbal ability. The authors add the need to understand the unique situation of caregivers who work with older adults with young onset frontotemporal dementia. In their caregiving article, “The spousal role of middle-aged Iranian women: A qualitative content-analysis study,” Fallahi et al. (2022) examine the role of women ages 40–60 who are often sandwiched between caring for their own children and their parents. The researchers see the necessity of understanding the larger culture in which the caregiving is taking place. For example, they look at the expected role of a spouse and what it means to be a woman within Iranian society. They suggest that losing these intersections and taking these caregivers out of cultural context would provide a more limited understanding of the struggles and successes of these women who provide care.

The final two articles place the older woman at the center of her various intersectional identities. Wiersma et al. (2022) in “I’m still the queen and I’m still on my throne’: Women’s reflections on gender and living with dementia,” bring in the “dehumanising discourse on dementia as a loss of personhood intertwined with a loss of gender and gendered intelligibility” (p. 4). Looking at gender and memory loss together presents a better picture of the lived experience than either category alone. This intersection is important as we strive for person-centered perspectives. The researchers also find that the intersection of gender and cognitive status could be a double-edged sword, as women feel they can handle aging with dementia better than men but that they, as women, receive much less, in terms of resources, than men.

While many of the articles in this issue take a narrative approach, Pombu et al. (2022) use photovoice to help us visualize experiences of widows in West Timor, Indonesia through the women’s own images. Through the widows’ (1.5–33 years) lenses, we see their direct experiences of widowhood. Those experiences vary from the image of a bible by Rose as her source of strength to continue life, to plastic glasses by Jasmine, a widow, who feels discriminated against because she now picks up recycling scavenged plastics to earn her living; to a motorcycle as a symbol of social support as a vehicle for family visits to widows, to flowers that show a woman feeling encouraged about the blooming of her children.

Hopefully, these articles will encourage the reader to apply varied and intersectional lenses in their own work.