In the current Australian industrial context typified by an ageing workforce, ever increasing globalisation, industrial reform and workplace stress, retirement has become a topic of great interest for governments, institutions and individuals. For women, the years beyond paid employment have special significance as their paid work experiences are most often dissimilar from those of men, with subsequently different implications for retirement. While there is a wealth of research on the economic consequences of gendered workplaces and therefore gendered retirement, there are few if any studies of the on-going lived experiences of women retirees. This thesis is one attempt to fill this significant gap. Specifically, it tracks 21 old aged women, including myself, as we negotiate the times beyond paid employment. Beginning in the imaginings and practices of retirement taken up by time-stressed employees as responses to the promise of future liberation, the thesis traces how we as old aged women articulate our experiences within normalised notions of what being retired and old signify. / Retirement as an academic and everyday concept is constituted as the final stage of a periodised life, a transition that is linear, progressive, focuses on rational sequencing and is constituted as needing to be managed. These social and linguistic conventions are closed systems that appear to emerge from the life experiences of particular groupings: most notably white, middle-class, able-bodied men. There are few if any alternative positions available for retiring women to occupy. This thesis is one attempt to challenge such uncontested conceptions of retirement and to open spaces for womens experiences to be expressed. / My critical analysis of discourses of retirement is enabled through the use of feminist post-structuralist approaches that allow me to think beyond the unified, masculine notion of leaving paid employment, to open the phenomenon up to multiplicity and to expose our experiences of these times as embedded in wider political discourses. Utilising Foucaults ethics of care of the self as a practice of freedom and Deleuze and Guattaris figurations and notions of becoming, I develop alternative ways to read the womens experiences that do not slide into traditional understandings. Rather than as successful or unsuccessful adjustment to the position of retiree, I conceive of the womens retirement practices as disciplined exercised of on-going self-reformation. / Situated as the participants are at the margins of retirement as we struggle to enact practices that maintain and honour our lives and senses of who we are and who we might become, we express the possibility of other (un)namings, other becomings that carve out spaces for an aesthetic of retired that is strange and oppositional. We as old aged women find, invent or produce new knowledges and subjectivities that open other possibilities beyond retirement as the final stage/role of a paid employment-centred life. / Through examining the lived experiences of retiring women against the grain of cultural norms I argue that retirement is an uncontested site of power relations and politics emerging out of yearnings, preparations and imaginings impelled by neo-liberal rationalities of individualised responsibility and population control. These masculinised forces attempt to draw us as old aged women back into the domesticated spaces of home as docile bodies, available, silent, invisible and generous to former workplaces, family and community. My research suggests that retirement as a space/time idea has developed within terms of patriarchal hegemony and appears to allow no space/ time for women and our experiences, aspirations or desires. However, my reading of the multiple experiences of the women participants in this study provides alternative models for understanding and living times beyond paid employment. / Thesis (PhDEducation)--University of South Australia, 2005

Thesis (M.A.)--Eastern Illinois University, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 32-37).

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Kenneth J. Simon. Dissertation Committee: James L. Malfetti. Bibliography: leaves 87-92.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2010. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 46-50). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1996. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [319]-329).

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

This research examined how the needs of elderly women are being met in the hospital setting. Qualitative data were gathered through in-depth interviews with eleven women between the ages of 70 and 93 who had had a hospital stay in the previous year. Data analysis revealed that the system failed to attend to participants' age specific needs. This failure created gaps in care which were particularly troubling for elderly female patients whose frailty made them susceptible to additional health problems. Participants received inadequate care in such areas as bathing, walking assistance and help with eating. Hearing impairments and denture issues were at times overlooked. These gaps in care caused participants to view a hospital stay as a matter of survival. Participants developed strategies to cope with gaps in care which included lowering their expectations, developing support networks and relying on family members to meet their basic needs and advocate on their behalf. Recommendations for change include identifying elderly women as a vulnerable patient population and defining the problems they face as structural issues as opposed to individual problems. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

The purpose of this study was to assess overall life satisfaction of older adult women who have not had children. The study explored the following questions: (1) What is the overall sense of life satisfaction of childfree women over 65? (2) What is the lived experience of being a childfree woman in U.S. society? (3) How does being childfree inform women’s overall life satisfaction? This study utilized a phenomenological research design. Fourteen childfree women over the age of 65 participated in semistructured interviews aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the sense of life satisfaction of childfree women in late life. The study’s purpose was to look at the lived experiences of childfree older women and further understand their abilities to live fulfilled lives despite the absence of child bearing. This research explored the experiences of women without children and hopefully will inspire future research on the topic as well as inform practice regarding the unique experiences and perspectives of childfree women. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

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