Working Women’s Retirement[i]
Much
of the discussion about employment and retirement are gender biased. This post is designed to
help rebalance our understanding of contributions women make in paid employment
and their considerations as the move into retirement. As I was surfing around I
came upon an article that discusses nature of women’s employment and
retirement.
The primary focus of the author, Dr,
Christine Price, is two show and discuss similarity and differences between
professional and non-professional women in the workforce. The method used to
gather data was qualitative. Qualitative researchers
aim to gather an in-depth understanding of human
behavior and the reasons that govern such behavior. The
qualitative method investigates the why and how of decision
making, not just what, where, when. Hence, smaller but focused samples are more often needed.[ii]In the conventional
view, qualitative methods produce information only on the particular cases
studied, and any more general conclusions are only propositions (informed
assertions).
Getting
on with the story, the research found five significant areas in which there
were differences between professional and nonprofessional women. They are (1) attachment to work, (2)
professional identity, (3) social contacts, (4) family roles and obligations,
and (5) community contacts.
I
will go briefly through these areas but I encourage you, if you are really
interested, to go to the sources, displayed at the bottom of this post.
Attachment
to Work
Perhaps
the most important factor, and I can identify with this is that “For the
professional women, the decision to retire involved the ending of a career that
dominated a significant portion of their adulthood and retirement was “…an
ending to a significant chapter of their lives.”
On
the other side is the non-Professional women did not appear to have difficulty
leaving their jobs in fact many felt relieved? No more “punching the clock” and
nobody felt that their job had been “fulfilling.”
Professional
Identity
Just
over half of the professionals also felt that they had lost some social status.
There were three components to this:
(1) misconceptions of reduced professional capabilities once retired,
(2) immediate loss of professional titles and (3) “the assumption of permanent
availability to others.
No
any of the non-professionals identified with the reduction of social status.
Some actually said retirement helped them feel “…an increased sense of
importance and responsibility.
Perhaps this is because many of the non-professionals weren’t paid a lot
and didn’t have much responsibility a work.
Social
Contacts
This
refers to the loss of daily contacts.
The professional women “…missed the casual friendships established at
work in addition to the feelings of satisfaction they gained from impacting the
lives of others.” The nonprofessional women did not report theses feelings.
Family
Roles and Obligations
Understandably.
While family roles were important to both groups, almost all… “of the
nonprofessional women mentioned family roles and obligations as influencing
their decisions to retire as well as how they structured their time after
retirement. The same women also described the roles and related
responsibilities of wife, daughter, mother and grandmother as taking priority
after retirement. This makes it apparent that the non-professional women held
family roles as central to their sense of self in retirement. This was not so
with the professional women
Community
Involvement
After
retirement both groups of women’s lives were “…filled with volunteer and
recreational activities. Teachers
served as substitute teachers (me to), or on various community boards related
to teens-at-risk and educational issues.
These activities were less varied among the nonprofessional women. “Nine
(60%) of the nonprofessional retirees served their communities by volunteering
with local organizations “…including hospital, recreation center and senior
center.
In summary
there continued to be differences between retirements for persons with
professional roles compared to those with “jobs” Jobs were experienced
primarily as sources of income. I think these findings are probably similar for
men, I think I’ll surf around and see if I can find some information
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