Empowerment Theory and Long-Living Women

Abstract

Empowerment theory is central to social work and to feminist gerontology. Yet an emphasis on increasing power and control over the circumstances of one's life does not neatly “fit” the involuntary bodily realities that figure centrally in the experiences of late age. The project of this article is to argue that the paradox of late life empowerment is that it requires acceptance and affirmation of the weak, suffering, and uncontrollable body.