Does Gender Affect Well-Being of Elderly?

Abstract

Gender plays a magical role in each and every sphere of life. We are living in a patriarchic society, where gender disparity still exists; this disparity is visible not only before birth, but still goes on till death. Despite inevitable biological differences with regard to gender, certain other factors appeared to be gender specific as far as even well-being is concerned. Research literature has shown that even elderly are not spared with these speculations. Thus the present researchers have decided to explore the impact of gender on the subjective well-being of old people. A purposive sample of 75 elderly in which 45 were male and 30 were female with the age range of 60-80 years, was drawn from Rohtak city, Haryana. For measuring their subjective well-being Sell and Nagpal’s scale of subjective well-being was used. In order to find out the statistical significant difference in overall subjective well-being and its various dimensions t-test were calculated. The significant value of t indicated that both groups differed on their overall subjective well-being, where male superseded female. Further positive well-being, ill-being and various domains of subjective well-being have been discussed in detailed in the paper. The gender disparity even at this stage of life suggests that society still needs gender sensitization and cognitive restructuring regarding gender.