9-50 am:
I have been retired now for nearly two years. I still don't like it, even tho' I have done a fair amount of contract work in that time. I do not like the loss of challenge, the loss of status, the loss of income, the loss of feeling part of the 'real' world.
But - you may say - you have surely gained. If you were not retired - you could not sail around and sit in harbours, pondering blogs, eating and drinking. This is true - and I would reply that I would rather have my working life back, especially how it was before the partial destruction of the University system c. 1994. I would exchange what I did then for even the good things about the now.
Question:- Is it harder for feminists to take to retirement than other people? Did we have to fight to get a career and thus find it hard to give up what was long fought for?
Showing posts with label retirement and feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label retirement and feminism. Show all posts
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Friday, 17 April 2009
Retirement and what we can learn from mid 20th century feminism
I am suggesting that some of the empty feelings around retirement are analogous to some of the emptiness reported about women in feminist texts of the 1960s.
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Freidan (1963) has in it poignant accounts of how some well-educated women (some who had had meaningful working lives during World War II) indicated a general unease with their lives. Women's work in the home (for various reasons) was seen as less meaningful and valuable in previously. This led to a loss of social identity and a feeling that life was meaningless or empty, even where the women had ideal homes and children and husbands. Women were trapped in a social situation that did not reflect the reality of post-war opportunities. Other writers, in other ways, express similar bleak pictures of women's life and labour.
Retirement seems to me to have some of the same characteristics both for men and for women. The details are different - the outcomes are different.
The analogy is helpful in energising and raising expectations of retired people - especially those who have retired before they feel ready. And it may be that it is a way of interpreting the horrors of retirment and old age.
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Freidan (1963) has in it poignant accounts of how some well-educated women (some who had had meaningful working lives during World War II) indicated a general unease with their lives. Women's work in the home (for various reasons) was seen as less meaningful and valuable in previously. This led to a loss of social identity and a feeling that life was meaningless or empty, even where the women had ideal homes and children and husbands. Women were trapped in a social situation that did not reflect the reality of post-war opportunities. Other writers, in other ways, express similar bleak pictures of women's life and labour.
Retirement seems to me to have some of the same characteristics both for men and for women. The details are different - the outcomes are different.
The analogy is helpful in energising and raising expectations of retired people - especially those who have retired before they feel ready. And it may be that it is a way of interpreting the horrors of retirment and old age.
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