The purpose of this study was to describe, analyze, and better understand the lived experiences of women age 50 and older in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Guiding this inquiry were the following research questions: 1) How do the older women participants experience the AA program? 2) What aspects of AA do older women consider beneficial? 3) What aspects of AA do older women consider detrimental? 4) What do older women consider as important conditions to succeed in the AA program? 5) How did these older women elicit meaning in their involvement with AA? and 6) How was the narrative aspect of AA experienced by the participants? Fourteen older women from AA meetings in Southwest Virginia participated in two qualitative interviews. The results were represented by narrative descriptions of each participan's experiences and analyzed for common themes across the stories, which were presented and discussed. For these participants, the AA program was found to intersect with narrative therapy. AA, like narrative therapy, highlights deconstructing and re-authoring life stories through personal narratives. Storytelling itself proved to be among the most important traditions of AA and a core benefit to the storyteller (and to a lesser extent, the listener). Study participants found that telling their stories allowed for 1) a way to give back to the program, 2) a feeling of belonging to the group, 3) a welcome reminder to the speaker of her past struggles with alcoholism, and 4) a spiritual experience. Many of the women articulated their early concerns with publicly sharing at meetings, as well as their ongoing considerations of boundaries, over-sharing, and conflicts of interest in storytelling. Finally, in an unexpected finding, the women cultivated and maintained intimate friendships with other women in AA that addressed relevant issues beyond sobriety including everyday needs and life challenges. Social activities often transcended the boundaries of the meetings. / Ph. D.

This dissertation explores bullerengue music as an oral and aural practice, tradition, and social space through which cantadoras—elderly women singers—construct and preserve knowledge, memory, and affect in the Caribbean region of Montes de Maria in northern Colombia. This study delves into bullerengue as a struggle of forms and cultural practices that cantadoras articulate through musical performance to resist marginalization and embody constructive ways of being in the world. The cantadoras realize a force and artistry directly related to their Maroon history, ontologies based on respect for life and nature, and the affective dimensions of bullerengue performance. My research goal is to assess, question, and impactfully revert the long history of discrimination and oppression in capitalist modernity—by gender, race, and age—while revealing how the hegemonic notions of music, poetry, and politics in Colombia have ostensibly excluded women, Afro-descendants, and therefore, Afro-descendant women. The importance of this dissertation lies in amplifying the cantadoras’ voices in academia through bullerengue as a vehicle for musical, social, and political possibilities to recognize the cantadoras’ ontologies that uphold life and nature over the capitalist extractivist ideology that has brought the global crises of wars. The research methodology includes music-recording production, participant observation, interviews, and archival research, reflecting on 15 years of collaboration with cantadoras. Chapter One discusses how folkloric constructions of bullerengue have been based on the silencing of cantadoras, given that researchers, as outsiders, could not grasp the influence of Afro-descendant elderly women. To revert the epistemological framework of white men producing ignorance about a tradition led by Afro-descendant women, the archival exploration unsilences women through the sound archive and oral memories of their heiresses. Chapter Two explores bullerengue song as a “technology of sound inscription”(Ochoa Gautier 2014), a women’s archive that shapes culture (Brooks 2021), and a political and epistemic expression within counter-hegemonic sites (Collins 1999; Davis 1999). I argue that song functions as a (re)sounding historical vehicle for the ancestresses and their heirs to communicate cross-generationally, overcoming the silencing of hegemonic politics and death. Chapter Three ethnographically investigates the lifelong processes of building the bullerengue-voice, drawing from cantadoral testimonies, concepts, and theories in dialogue with academic sources. Chapter Four chronicles the production of the album Ancestras, focusing it as a lens through which to study Petrona Martinez’s bullerengue-voice as an entity that united Afro-diasporic women while blurring symbolic, material, and geopolitical boundaries through song and sound reproduction technologies despite her tragic loss of material voice. I argue that her bullerengue-voice crossed such boundaries thanks to its epistemic aurality—a mutual construction relating voice and worlding—and poetics of collaboration. I also reflect on the album’s cross-cultural collaborations and how I—Petrona’s producer and friend— sought to help her amplify her voice, thought, and oral memory.

Guided by feminist gerontology, this qualitative study explored the role of activism in the lives of older women. More specifically, it examined the involvement of older women in one particular group of activists, the Raging Grannies. Of particular interest was to understand the experience of how and why older women become involved in activism. This study was collaborative in nature, with in-depth active interviews as the primary method of data collection. In total 15 women participated in face-to-face interviews, with five women contributing to the study in an on-line Raging Grannies forum. Participants were located in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. The findings demonstrated that these women, who used non-violent, creative methods of protest, challenged the traditional views of growing older. Through their activism, the Raging Grannies also created community. Although the Raging Grannies did not define their experience as leisure, they described their experience as "fun" but rewarding work. The intent of this research was to contribute to the literature on ageing and leisure while giving the opportunity for older women to share their stories. Emergent theory suggests that activism for these women represented the application or expression of shared life experiences which are unique to women. The Raging Grannies provided the space for the study participants to express their collective life experiences, particularly in the context of shared concerns around a more just, fair and sustainable society.

Health beliefs of 221 postmenopausal women were assessed to predict the Breast Cancer Screening Behaviors of breast self-examination (BSE) and utilization of mammography. Champion's (1991) revised Health Belief Model (HBM) instrument for BSE, which assesses the HBM constructs of Seriousness, Susceptibility, Benefits, Barriers, Confidence and Health Motivation, was utilized along with her Barriers and Benefits instrument for mammography usage. Ronis' and Harel's (1989) constructs of Severity-Late and Severity-Early were evaluated along with Cuing and demographic variables. These exogenous latent constructs were utilized in a LISREL path model to predict Breast Cancer Screening Behavior.

Social support has been shown to lessen the negative effects of life stress on psychological and physical health. The stress buffering model and the main effects model of social support were compared using two samples of women over the age of 50 who were either married or recently widowed. These two groups represent low and high uncontrollable major life stress respectively. Other life stress events were also taken into account. Measures assessed current level of life stress, perceived social support, satisfaction with social support, and psychological symptomatology. Results using overall psychological health as the dependent variable support the main effects model.

Depression is believed to be the most prevalent mental dysfunction among older adults, and depression and anger are frequently linked in theory and in therapy. This study was undertaken to determine whether participation in group counseling sessions would increase awareness and expression of anger and decrease depression levels in women aged 65 and older. Treatment group members were compared to a matching control group. Both groups completed the Anger Self Report Questionnaire and the Beck Depression Inventory. Comparison of the ASR subscale scores, Awareness of Anger, Expression of Anger, Guilt, Condemnation of Anger, and Mistrust, revealed no significant differences between the treatment and control groups. However, the treatment group scored significantly higher on the BDI than did the control group. Analysis of variance of the ASR and the BDI, and the variables upon which the treatment and control groups were matched revealed some significant differences, and comparison of the women in this study with the two groups upon whom the ASR was validated showed this study's older women scored significantly lower than the validation groups on the ASR. The author concluded that six sessions is not long enough to effect change in either anger awareness or expression in older women, and more time is needed to establish group cohesiveness in older populations than that generally thought to be needed for younger populations. Replication of the study with men and women, and replication of Khe study using a longitudinal design is recommended in order to determine whether awareness and expression of anger change with age, or whether differences between older and younger populations are due to historical and environmental influences.

No description available.

Guided by feminist gerontology, this qualitative study explored the role of activism in the lives of older women. More specifically, it examined the involvement of older women in one particular group of activists, the Raging Grannies. Of particular interest was to understand the experience of how and why older women become involved in activism. This study was collaborative in nature, with in-depth active interviews as the primary method of data collection. In total 15 women participated in face-to-face interviews, with five women contributing to the study in an on-line Raging Grannies forum. Participants were located in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. The findings demonstrated that these women, who used non-violent, creative methods of protest, challenged the traditional views of growing older. Through their activism, the Raging Grannies also created community. Although the Raging Grannies did not define their experience as leisure, they described their experience as "fun" but rewarding work. The intent of this research was to contribute to the literature on ageing and leisure while giving the opportunity for older women to share their stories. Emergent theory suggests that activism for these women represented the application or expression of shared life experiences which are unique to women. The Raging Grannies provided the space for the study participants to express their collective life experiences, particularly in the context of shared concerns around a more just, fair and sustainable society.

This thesis is qualitative study of the perceptions of aged Italian women in receiving care. It examines intra-ethnic group differences between Italian-Immigrant and Italian-Canadian women, and their definition of the experience of receiving care. Also, it addresses gender, class, and ethnicity issues which have implications for social work practice, policy, and research. / Sixty-one interviews were conducted with thirty participants, over the age of sixty-five. Participants were interviewed in their treatment environments with follow-up interviews in their home settings. Semi-structured in-depth interviews documenting these women's life histories, as well as participant observation, were the qualitative methods used to collect data. Interview transcripts and field notes were analyzed qualitatively to identify similarities and differences in participants' perceptions as care-receivers. A feminist theoretical perspective was applied to the discussion of the data. / The study suggests that differences exist between aged Italian-Immigrant and Italian-Canadian women care-receivers. These differences are directly related to specific personal and social factors which nurture and oppress them. Aged Italian-Canadian women were found to have more resources, greater independence with their supportive alliances, and higher levels of self-esteem and life satisfaction than aged Italian-Immigrant women. The findings provide insight into resources these women developed to deal with the constraints imposed on them by their gender, class, and ethnicity. / The study suggests an integrated-interactive approach of practice, policy, and research to implement changes so as to meet the needs of these individuals. The study recommends that a feminist social work approach be adopted in the educational curriculum for the training of social work professionals.

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent of nutrition knowledge of older women and compare their nutrition knowledge score with regards to nutritional risk level, age, and level of education attained. This study examined relationships between nutritional risk level and age subgroups of participants in regards to nutrition knowledge scores. Members of the Indiana Extension Homemakers Association (IEHA) of Shelby County (n=92) were given the DETERMINE Checklist with demographic survey and a nutrition knowledge questionnaire. Results: nutrition knowledge scores were inversely associated with nutritional risk level and significantly different between levels of education attained; there was significant correlation between nutritional risk level and level of education. No significant interactions with nutrition knowledge scores and all variables combined (nutritional risk level, age, and level of education attained) were noted. This study contributes to the limited amount of research done with Extension Homemakers and will help identify future program needs and nutrition education topics. / Department of Family and Consumer Sciences