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BOOK REVIEW |
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Doctoral Candidate in Sociology University of Utah Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0250
Age Matters: Realigning Feminist Thinking, edited by Toni M. Calasanti and Kathleen F. Slevin. Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, New York, NY, 2006, 353 pp., $34.95 (paper).
Older Widows and the Life Course: Multiple Narratives of Hidden Lives, by Pat Chambers. Ashgate Publishing Company, Burlington, VT, 2005, 266 pp., $99.95 (cloth).
Women of a Certain Age: Contemporary Italian Fictions of Female Aging, by Rita C. Cavigioli. Farleigh Dickinson University Press, Cranbury, NJ, 2005, 270 pp., $50.00 (cloth).
As we reach a new stage of life, we realign our actions and beliefs to reflect not only the personal decisions and desires that define our past, but also the cultural norms and expectations assigned to that particular life stage. As culture and society have modernized across both recent and distant history, new opportunities have arisen for women. Unfortunately, though, the culturally prescribed norms and expectations assigned to the various stages of a woman's life have not always kept pace, leaving her to balance her traditional familiarity with a quest for modernity. What she wants to do is not always what she ought to do or what others expect her to do.
This essay reviews three seemingly unrelated books that speak to this conundrum. The first book, Age Matters, is a collection of essays written by sociologists, gerontologists, and feminist scholars that is "designed to challenge and transform feminist thinking by highlighting age as a core site of social inequality" (as quoted on the back cover). The second book, Older Widows and the Life Course, is a narrative analysis that attempts to debunk the dominant belief that widowhood is a unidimensional role of misery and decline. The third book, Women of a Certain Age, is written by an expert in twentieth-century Italian literature; this book provides a critical overview of how the demography and cultural imagery of Italy has changed in recent decades, often placing the modern-day woman in a precarious position where modernity and tradition collide.
Although from different disciplines and addressing different topics, these three books all make a similar point about the older woman—that her lived experience is a confluence of history, culture, and most importantly the accumulation of the opportunities and constraints she has faced earlier in life. The three books discuss the importance of considering age as a principle source of inequality that imbues either advantage or disadvantage that is carried throughout the subsequent phases of the life course.
Three Perspectives on Women and Aging
Age Matters is an edited volume comprising 14 chapters. In the introduction, editors Toni M. Calasanti and Kathleen F. Slevin suggest that ageism permeates feminist thought as well as wider societal thinking. They argue that while feminists have done a good job in documenting the problems and disadvantages associated with old age, they rarely provide a critical discussion of how age, or as they say "age relations," structure the opportunities and constraints that persons accumulate throughout the life course. As defined in Calasanti's previous work (2003), "age relations" is the system of inequality based on age that privileges the not-old at the expense of the old. This happens because we live in a society that values youth and views old age as a period of decline. Classic feminist theory recognizes race, class, and gender as the primary organizing principles of power; age is rarely conceptualized as an additional master status that also provides advantages and disadvantages, benefits and detriments. By neglecting the role of age relations in feminist inquiry, the editors claim that feminism has furthered "the oppression that old people face, especially those marginalized at the intersections of multiple hierarchies" (p. 3). Thus, they call for "a shift in how feminist scholars approach the study of inequalities by demonstrating how and why age matters" (p. 1). To do this, they have assembled a series of well-written chapters that provide both theoretical justification and empirical examples of how age is a source of inequality throughout the life course and why it must be incorporated into the feminist theories.
The first set of chapters discusses how traditional feminist inquiry has substantiated ageist thought and has perhaps even fueled the development of a highly profitable anti-aging industry. For example, the chapter by Ruth Ray explores how Betty Friedan, the foremother of feminism, did not recognize the importance of age as a source of inequity in her original text, The Feminine Mystique (Friedan, 1963). Friedan only recognized the importance of age when she herself became aged, and even then, in The Fountain of Age (Friedan, 1993), she was resistant to discuss the negative aspects that accompany age, such as decline, illness, disability. Neal King outlines the theoretical reasons for why feminist theory has traditionally neglected the study of age and age relations; he then defines how age is a source of oppression just as race, class, and gender are. Chapters by Kelly Joyce and Laura Mamo, and Barbara Marshall and Stephen Katz, discuss how people use technology to mask the fact that they are aging and that entire industries have helped create a market for anti-aging products. These initial chapters provide the theoretical rationale for why feminism ought to be more focused on the pervasive effects of ageism that define opportunities or lack of opportunities in early, midlife, and later life.
The remaining chapters encourage the reader to think about how age intersects with other social statuses such as race, class, and gender to create a unique constellation of advantages or disadvantages. For example, the experience of being a man or woman is going to be different for the 80 year old versus the 20 year old. That experience will be even more different for persons of various race or class backgrounds. As persons reach older ages, they will carry with them not only the experiences associated with being young, but also the experiences they have of being a woman, of particular economic means, and of a certain ethnicity. Many of the chapters highlight the lived experiences of old people in order to show how age intersects with other forms of social status to diversify the individual experience of old age. An analysis by Julie Ann McMullin and Ellie Berger, for example, focuses on the compounded inequities that older unemployed women face in the labor market, as they are less valued in relation to both the male and younger applicants. Another chapter by Jennie Hislop and Sara Arber discusses how something as natural as sleep is shaped by both age and gender. Toni Calasanti shows that the carework performed by women earlier in the life course actually serves to make older women experience more stress when they are confronted with caring for a spouse at later ages; men who do not typically have previous care work experience are not as stressed or troubled by the physical rigors and emotional demands of caregiving. Anna Zajicek and her colleagues present an exploration of the unpaid care work among older Chicanas, revealing the significant exploitation that older Chicana grandmothers face in caring for their families. Kathleen Slevin presents an analysis that illustrates how older lesbians are confronted not only by the discriminating stare of the male gaze, but also by the gaze of youth. These chapters, along with several others, provide a set of analyses that show how age and other status variables (e.g., race, class, gender) interact to create a unique experience of old age.
The volume ends with a personal essay written by Martha Holstein, who at 65 years of age reflects "On Being an Old Woman." She speaks of the physicality of aging and how she wants to be and tries to be both "ageful and proud" (p. 317), yet she remains somewhat resistant to or resentful about the processes that physically demarcate her body as old. She reminds us that old age is not a status we choose to become; it is a status that we inherit simply by the virtue of living, not dying. It is a status that carries with it negative expectations, and one that we cannot physically mask, no matter how much we mentally will it away. Holstein closes her personal essay by discussing how small acts of resistance, if done by enough women simultaneously, may be the only way to begin transforming the ageist social norms that permeate our individual and collective narratives. She suggests the need for micro-communities (e.g., age-segregated housing) that allow persons to explore their fears and troubles with age peers.
Overall, this 14-chapter edited volume is an excellent addition to both the feminist and gerontological literatures. The individual chapters are well-written and together provide both a background and critical discussion of how and why age is so relevant and critical to include in feminist inquiry. It provides a nice mix of research approaches, theoretical discussions, and even personal reflections, which provide the rationale, encouragement, and examples of how feminist theory can be revised and expanded to include aspects of age, ageism, and age relations. The book in its entirety would provide a textbook-like resource for an undergraduate or graduate course in aging or gender studies. Or, individual chapters from the book could stand-alone as supplemental readings to complement lectures on the criticisms of feminist theory. I agree with reviewers on the back cover, who say this book will become "essential reading" and that it is "an invaluable resource" for scholars and students interested in feminism and age studies.
In the second book, Older Widows and the Life Course, Pat Chambers presents a detailed analysis of older widows' personal narratives, with a goal of showing that the commonly held stereotypes of widowhood are often shortsighted. She argues that "without an understanding of the multiple and complex narratives of older women's lives, we are in danger of misinterpreting their current experience by substantiating the dominant, one-dimensional narrative of late-life widowhood as a time of loneliness, ill health, and misery" (p. 226). She argues that the process of becoming and being widowed is unique for each woman because the individual's experience of loss is rooted in the totality of her previous life course experiences.
She adopts a multiple narrative approach to uncover the heterogeneity of the widowhood experience. After first presenting a brief biography of 20 old widows—pen portraits, as she called them—she presents a series of analytic chapters in which she categorizes the experience of widows into four distinct narratives and then breaks those narratives into various subplots that describe the array of feelings and experiences expressed by widows.
The first narrative describes how women view the state of widowhood—either as a period of loneliness and despair, as a transition period in which she encounters a new self-awareness and sense of freedom as she rebuilds a life for herself, or simply as a time to get on with one's previous life despite the trouble she is experiencing. The second narrative describes the widow's sense of personal identity (from low to high self-esteem), which remains fairly constant throughout life, including during the difficult transition to widowhood. The third narrative describes how the women thought their collective experience with the women of their generation has sculpted and constructed their past and present lives, including their ability to cope with the loss of their spouse. The fourth narrative describes the woman's social identity, locating her within a certain social network of friends, family, and acquaintances.
Chambers argues that although each woman spoke specifically of these four narratives, each had a unique combination of experiences and reactions that could not be truly understood "without first assembling all the parts (the narratives), and the individual components (the subplots) of those parts." She then adds, "No one element is more or less important than the other; it is the way in which they all fit together which creates the individual experience" (p. 239). Her careful categorization of the narratives and the subplots within each narrative show that widowhood is not a singular process that all experience similarly. Chambers' analyses reveal that bereavement does not follow the straightforward stage models that some have suggested in the past (e.g., Bowlby, 1980 or Kubler-Ross, 1969). She shows how each woman enters widowhood and copes with being a widow in a way that is uniquely her own, influenced by her past but also shaped by her future aspirations and goals.
In addition to the analysis itself, Chambers provides three separate literature- review chapters that explore theoretical and empirical work related to late-life widowhood. As well, she provides an entire chapter on how to conduct research on late-life widowhood, and an additional chapter that explains the detailed methods she used to conduct this particular study. For example, she discusses (at length) the ethical issues surrounding qualitative data collection, how qualitative methods have the potential to undercover the in-depth experience of an older widow, and how her role as a researcher may have influenced the collection and interpretation of data. She clearly is a careful researcher who leaves no detail to the reader's imagination.
Although well written and easy to read, this book is much like a lengthy academic dissertation. Thus, Older Widows and the Life Course may not lend itself to classroom use in the same way that Age Matters might. While thorough and rigorous, this book-length empirical analysis is probably not of great utility other than for bereavement scholars, given its specialized attention to that matter. Plus, the high price tag of this book ($99.95) would make it inaccessible to many.
In the third book, Women of a Certain Age, Rita Cavigioli traces how the demographic and cultural revolutions of recent Italian history have reshaped the Italian woman's life experiences and opportunities. She focuses primarily on the life experiences of aging Italian women as portrayed by fictional characters in literature from the 1990s, a time period that comes at the end of a century featuring great social and demographic change within Italian culture. She applies gerontological theory, particularly life-course or life-history theory, to Italian cultural studies, particularly the analysis of contemporary Italian fiction. She comments, "My choice of Italian aging narratives and of an age-conscious methodology of literary analysis reflects an interest in investigating the dynamics of literary representation in relation to the cultural imaginary of a given society and in the exploration of wide-ranging life-course genres" (p. 30).
The first part of the book is a series of chapters that outline the demographic trends and cultural discourses that define age-related norms, expectations, and stereotypes throughout various periods of modern Italian history. She then reviews how Italian women have been portrayed in the media, how the Italian woman of today differs demographically from her mother, and how the cultural and feminist revolutions of the 20th century have redefined the roles and responsibilities assigned to women in Italy. She presents a series of statistics, facts, and cultural narratives that expose the reader of Italian fiction to principles that raise their level of age-consciousness. The average reader of contemporary Italian fiction is not likely very critical of the portrayal of aging characters, whereas one who would read Cavigioli's book would be provided with general guidelines on how to conduct an age-conscious reading or analysis of that literature.
In the second part of the book, Cavigioli highlights particular works of Italian literature that exemplify the struggles that women face under these historical, cultural, and demographic changes that characterize Italian society. Using examples of fictional female characters who face issues such as caregiving and institutionalization, she illustrates how the modern-day Italian woman often struggles with the expectations that were handed down to her from her mother, while also trying to live in a society that culturally and demographically does not resemble the society of her mother. Cavigioli summarizes, "The female characters in the novels display a wide and composite spectrum of responses to such discourses and scenarios, ranging from restless discomfort to active criticism. ... They measure the gap between their recollections of the way things used to be for them as younger selves, as well as for their mothers and grandmothers, and their present condition as older selves ... in a postmodern, postindustrial society" (p. 30).
I admittedly am not an expert in literary analysis, thus I cannot comment with any authority on the utility of this particular text in a classroom setting or about its contribution to the relevant literature. However, it was refreshing to see the careful and critical application of life course theory to a field such as literary analysis. As I read it, the main purpose of Cavigioli's book is to offer examples of how to conduct a theoretically driven analysis of contemporary Italian fiction that is aware of the pervasive role that age, gender, and changing cultural traditions play in shaping the female characters' life choices, opportunities, and experiences.
Marrying Life Course and Feminist Theory
While the first book, Age Matters, urged feminist scholars to consider age as a central source of social inequality along with the traditionally discussed statuses of race, class, and gender, the authors of the second two books discussed, Older Widows and the Life Course and Women of a Certain Age, adopt a life course perspective to understand the similarities and disparities across the female life course. Although different from the terminology that Calasanti and her peers use, the life course perspective appears to be a theoretical paradigm that allows for the consideration of age and age relations within the traditional feminist paradigm. Life course theory may provide a framework for creating a less ageist version of feminist theory. It may be an option to achieve the precise realignment that the authors in the Age Matters text call for.
The life course paradigm, often defined by the work of Glen Elder (e.g., Elder, 1998, 1994), has four basic principles:
In the remainder of this essay I will show how each principle of the life course paradigm lends itself to the theoretical discussions that were presented in the Age Matters text.
Calasanti and Slevin suggest that traditional feminist theory does not consider how age relations structure the opportunities available to or the expectations associated with being older vs. younger, and how those earlier life experiences are then compounded across the successive phases of life. Glen Elder's life course principle #4 allows for this precise thing. In the analysis of older widows' lived experiences, Chambers used a life course framework to explain that grief is not as much about the discontinuity or disruption caused by the death of a spouse, as it is the continuity of one's previous self. For example, the woman who had many friends earlier in life, were likely to rely on friends as a significant source of support as she faced the realities of old age, such as widowhood. However, the woman who had very few friends prior to widowhood will also lack that support network upon loss. This example shows that individuals will carry with them into later life the qualities and experiences that defined their early life, regardless of whether those experiences were attributable to personality, biology, or some ascribed statuses of that person. The life course perspective allows us to consider the long lasting effects that come from the interaction and accumulation of power and advantage based on more than one characteristic. Chambers wrote that she adopted a life course perspective precisely because it allowed her to "to situate the older widows' lives within a framework of being ‘old’ and ‘female’" (p. 233).
Furthermore, it is widely recognized among life course scholars that different generations will interpret and endure the trials and tribulations of old age differently, simply because they have shared with similarly-aged peers the various stages of life that are enmeshed within a particular macrohistorical context (Elder's principle #1). For example, the female characters that Cavigioli introduces are often at odds with social expectations because the traditional cultural preferences and norms do not necessarily fit with the realities of their modern lives. The modern-day Italian woman is more likely to be childless and unmarried. Thus, the expectation that children will provide social support and caregiving in times of need is not as likely for this generation of women as it was for generations of women who had a more traditional family structure. In her literary analyses guided primarily by life course principles, Cavigioli eloquently states how age and history intersect to impact the lived experiences of older women: "Age legacies" handed down from the past affect in various ways the old-age images that women, stronger in numbers, years, and prospects, are renegotiating today" (p. 48). The incorporation of age, gender, and history into a single theoretical approach allows us to expand the utility of feminist thinking in ways that Calasanti and Slevin have called for in the Age Matters volume.
The life-course paradigm also incorporates the notion of how others impact the individual's life-course activities and opportunities (Elder's principle #3). Social support and social networks vary by both gender and by age—a point made throughout Chambers' analysis of widowhood, as well as in the several of the chapters in the Calasanti and Slevin volume. It is critical that we understand how the lack of social connections or the abundance of social connections during different stages of the life course limit or expand the possibilities available to individuals and how those influences can have both immediate and lasting impacts throughout the life course. The life course principle of linked lives allows us to begin thinking about how age, gender, race, and class can all interact to produce a certain set of social supports that expand or ameliorate the opportunities available to an aging individual.
Finally, the life course paradigm's attention to agency and constraint (Elder's principle #4) is an important theoretical construct that helps us achieve the realignment of feminist theory that Calasanti and Slevin have encouraged. Agency means that individuals have choice in what they do and how they act; constraint means that the availability of options from which to choose is limited. Constraint may be imposed legally on the basis of age, gender, race, class, or sexual orientation; or it more commonly is imposed by the normative expectations associated with those socially-defined categories of power and hierarchy. In a life course perspective, it is imperative to consider how both constraints and agency are defined on the basis of the interaction of age, race, class, and gender—and how those impact the lived experiences of late life.
Taken together, the principles of the life course paradigm provide us a framework through which we can understand how and why the lived experiences of older persons are so unique and diverse. In Age Matters, Calasanti and Slevin have claimed that feminist thinking needs to include a consideration of age, along with other social statuses. They write, "We advance this volume in hope that once feminists take old age into account, they will work to imbue it with positive content—a content that reflects the diversity of old people, their lives and, their varied contributions" (p. 14). Ultimately, it does not matter whether we accomplish this goal by realigning feminist theory to consider how age-based ideologies structure one's experiences throughout the life course (as Calasanti and Slevin proposed) or whether we use the life course paradigm to consider how age interacts with other forces of history, culture, and social statuses such as gender and race to structure the experiences, attitudes, and beliefs of older persons (as Chambers and Cavigioli have done). The main goal of these three books is to develop both empirical and theoretical analyses that bring together age studies and feminist thought to understand the lived experiences of older adults. A life course perspective accomplishes that goal, as does an age-based feminist analysis. No matter what we call it, it is a positive direction that will increase the utility of feminist thinking for aging-related analyses. I, for one, am pleased to see the attention on this type of theoretical development.
References
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