Abstract
AbstractThis paper extends our understanding of employment and gendered rural ageing by examining the latent benefits of paid work for mid-life women in rural Ireland. Existing social gerontology literature deals extensively with manifest financial reasons to work, consequences of gendered pay and pension inequalities, work-related health concerns and the negative impacts to an extended working life for women. However, there is much less focus on the latent non-financial positive contributions that work provides for the older woman, especially within a rural context. Findings from this study show how mid-life women, even if in lower-paid, precarious work or in poorer health may choose to continue working into older age. Paid work provides not only financial autonomy, but also temporal structure, life purpose, personal agency, social connectivity and a self-identity that most women are reluctant to relinquish to retirement. Meaningful work plays a critical role in the ageing experience of older rural women. A qualitative study of 25 women aged 45–65 in Connemara, Ireland was undertaken from a lifecourse perspective and analysed using constructivist grounded theory to allow rich, novel narrative to emerge. Narrative from seven, who best represent all participants, are utilised in this paper. Conclusions suggest that the latent benefits of paid work are at least as, if not more important than financial gain for rural mid-life women.
Highlights
This paper extends our understanding of gendered rural ageing by examining the diverse reasons why some mid-life women in rural Ireland want to work in older age
There are ever-increasing numbers of women participating in European Union labour markets (European Union, 2017), especially at mid-life (Ní Léime and Ogg, 2019), and this is the case in Ireland where mid-life women are working beyond the traditional base of 65 years in order to reach a revised pension age of 66, and 68 years in 2028 (Ní Léime and Street, 2019)
Of the 25 participants interviewed as part of the wider study on gendered ageing, narrative from the seven cited in this paper best illustrate the critical intersections of work, gender, ageing and rural place
Summary
This paper extends our understanding of gendered rural ageing by examining the diverse reasons why some mid-life women in rural Ireland want to work in older age. Defined in this study as 45–65 years of age, mid-life is a time of review, reflection and action (Biggs, 1999), something which is increasingly influencing some government policies, e.g. that of the United Kingdom (UK) (HM Government, Department for Work and Pensions, nd). As adopted in this study, mid-life is the most likely stage in which women assess their lives to date and take decisions that may impact the quality of their future old age (Dittmann-Kohli and Jopp, 2007; Wiggs, 2010; Lachman et al, 2015). Crucial mid-lifecourse transitions such as divorce, widowhood, redundancy and retirement from work, within the context of a recessionary economy as experienced by Ireland from the period of 2008 to its current post-crisis state (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2018), may significantly influence the quality of the ageing process
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