The Gerontologist, Vol 37, Issue 4 452-461, Copyright © 1997 by The Gerontological Society of America

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Gender, the state, and constructing the old as dependent: lessons from the economic transition in Poland

TM Calasanti and AM Zajicek
Department of Sociology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg 24061-0137, USA. toni@utvm1.cc.vt.edu

To critically examine the notion of the old as a "burden" to society, we use a political economic and gender-sensitive approach to explore the impact of the economic transition in Poland on retirement. Poland is an especially useful case for analyzing ways that divergent political economies shape the aging experiences of men and women, as differences between the two systems cannot be attributed to cultural variations. Overall, we find that old-age dependence in Poland is not inevitable; it is not created in a uniform manner for men and women; and it is not passively accepted by the old. Further, by examining economic activities in general, we show that retired men and women have been and are critical to the viability of both economic systems, albeit in different ways.

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