Age Matters: Realigning Feminist Thinking (review)

Political scientist Jane Mansbridge has suggested that it is useful to think of feminism as a continually changing discourse, a field of "contested aspirations and understandings." (1995:27) I often return to her discussion because this idea makes room for a feminism that affirms differences, a perspective that might be fruitfully attentive to the simultaneous workings of multiple crosscutting oppressions. As we pursue specific projects, that can sometimes feel like a tall order, and in weaker moments, one might hope to be forgiven for qualms about what one contributor to this volume labels "the lengthening list of oppressions." (Neal King, Chapter 3) Yet the goal of a truly inclusive sociology is one that keeps many of us engaged and constantly learning to think in new ways.

This collection puts forward an agenda for making age and ageism more central to feminist analyses. The editors and contributors (from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada) work from a critical gerontological perspective and a conceptualization of age relations that emphasize the oppression of old women and men by younger adults in the work and childrearing stages of life (and I did wonder how children fit into the model). In a first section, contributors provide discussions of the absences and distortions created by analyses that ignore age and sketch out agendas for investigating the experiences of old women and men. These chapters cover the body, science and technology studies, intimate relations, carework and family life. One – Ruth Ray's thoughtful discussion of Betty Friedan's later writing on aging – draws material from a classic writer of the liberal feminism developed by white women in the 1970s, while others foreground particular racial-ethnic stories and identities. Katherine Allen and Alexis Walker's chapter on family relationships, for example, examines the memoir of Essie Mae Washington-Williams (whose mother was an unmarried black maid, and whose biological father was a white U.S. senator), considering her changing understandings of family relationships and decisions she made about them as she grew older.

A second section emphasizes "aging voices," and includes empirical studies of older workers and unemployment, sleep experiences of mid-life and older women, old lesbians' feelings about their bodies, spouses as caregivers in old age, and older men's attempts to sustain or renegotiate masculinity. These chapters illustrate well the value of researching the experiences of older people; but the data seem to come mostly from middle-class, white participants. A concluding chapter provides a personal reflection on aging by medical ethicist Martha Holstein, who applies the insights of critical gerontology to her own gendered consciousness of aging.

One theme that runs through many of these discussions is a strong critique of the new model of "successful aging" as ageist, since it emphasizes so insistently maintaining activities and lifestyles associated with youth, ignoring other possible goals and experiences. The authors point out that it is also a heavily consumerist and often medicalized model, emphasizing cosmetic and pharmaceutical interventions. As a result, it produces expectations that can only be met by those with considerable resources – and it is a set-up even for them, since virtually everyone eventually faces declining capabilities if they live to an advanced age.

Many of the contributors complain that feminist researchers have explored gender, race and class, but neglected age; some feminists would point out that class inequalities have also been understudied by those claiming to pursue intersectional analysis. Some of these chapters discuss the circumstances of old people living with scant resources; however, the emphasis on critique of the "new model" seemed to me to slant the discussion toward those in more comfortable circumstances. In addition, the editors emphasize in their introductory essay that feminist analysis should include not only "older" people (in the immediate post-retirement years), but also those who are "old" (that is, well beyond retirement). Many of the studies in Part 2, however, involve participants in their 60s and early 70s; I mused that including the "old...