No place for old women: a critical inquiry into age in later working life

Abstract

Western countries currently face pressing demands to transform the labour market participation of older workers, in order to address the pressing economic and social challenges of an ageing population. However, in this article we argue that our understanding of older workers is limited by a dominant discourse that emphasises individuals rather than organisations; and valorises youth as the performative aspiration for all workers, regardless of age. To see things differently, and to see different things, we offer a novel analytical synthesis that combines insights from post-foundational feminist theory, the 2007 film No Country for Old Men and an empirical study of older nurses working in the Norwegian public health-care system. Our aim is to provide the foundations for alternative interventions in the world of work that might underpin a more sustainable future for older workers.

Using the concept of hubots to understand the work entailed in using digital technologies in healthcare

“…Our paper can be seen as a modest contribution to a wider body of metaphor-based research (Cornelissen, 2005; Cornelissen et al , 2008) in organisational studies and health services research, and the metaphor we deploy is deliberately imposed or “projected” onto the organisational reality to aid and illuminate our sense-making. The inspiration for using a metaphor in this way came from Norwegian and Southampton colleagues (Lotherington et al , 2016) who combined insights from a popular film with feminist theory to re-examine nursing work.…”

Is part of ageism actually ableism?

“…For example, when talking about 'active ageing', the comparison is the 'younger worker' and how good the older worker or retiree is at 'keeping up' (cf. Calasanti, 2005;Lotherington et al, 2017). Focusing on productivity and being active means that individuals who are unable or unwilling to adhere to this paradigm are a 'problem' (Calasanti and Slevin, 2001: 183).…”

The Political Matters: Exploring material feminist theories for understanding the political in health, inequalities and nursing

“…In research with older nurses’ experiences of work, concepts of age and gender materialize as politicized, emergent, performative phenomena. Previously theorized or studied as distinct even intersecting, these concepts are now understood as connected to intersecting assemblages of bodies, objects, technologies, organizational practices, policies with subjectivities and identities (Lotherington, Obstfelder and Halford, ).…”

“…Materialist feminist accounts offer deeper understandings of how socially, culturally and materially the phenomena of inequalities, of obesity and health, emerge or materialize as a product of human and nonhuman relations (Warin, ). With digital health technologies now such an everyday part of motivating, managing or improving body size and health, technologies and the body become central to understanding new emerging forms of embodiment and subjectivity, especially those of gender and age (Lotherington et al, ; Lupton, ).…”