The domestic and gendered context for retirement

Abstract

Against a global backdrop of population and workforce ageing, successive UK governments have encouraged people to work longer and delay retirement. Debates focus mainly on factors affecting individuals' decisions when and how to retire. We argue that fuller understanding of retirement can be achieved by recognising the ways in which individuals' expectations and behaviours reflect a complicated, dynamic set of interactions between domestic environments and gender roles, often established over a long time period, and more temporally proximate factors. Using a qualitative data set we explore how the timing, nature and meaning of retirement and retirement planning are played out in specific domestic contexts. We conclude that future research and policies surrounding retirement need to: focus on the household, not the individual; consider retirement as an often messy and disrupted process and not a discrete event; and understand that retirement may mean very different things for women and for men.

Managing employees beyond age 65: from the margins to the mainstream?

“…Flynn, 2010;Barnes-Farrell and Matthews, 2007). This perspective also recognises and that decisions around later-life working and when and how to retire are heavily influenced by a whole host of factors outside of the immediate work environment (Vickerstaff et al 2008;Loretto and Vickerstaff, 2013). Work in the Netherlands has highlighted the importance of individually-negotiated or idiosyncratic deals (I-deals) in motivating (older) employees to continue working (Bal et al, 2012).…”

“…Most UK research on the employment of over-65s has focused on the individual -assessing the motivations and characteristics of those in work. Factors such as orientation to work (Parry and Taylor, 2007), health (Lain 2011b;Griffin and Hesketh, 2008), educational qualifications (Smeaton and McKay, 2003;Lain, 2011a), gender / domestic situations and responsibilities (Loretto and Vickerstaff, 2013) and financial circumstances (McMunn et al, 2009) affect individual preferences and decisions. In contrast, employment and organisational policies have been driven by official and popular conceptions of the 'older worker', most often considered to be someone aged between 50 and SPA.…”

Longitudinal associations of experiences of adversity and socioeconomic disadvantage during childhood with labour force participation and exit in later adulthood

“…First, we examined whether males or females were at a greater risk of labour force exit associated with experiences of childhood adversity and socioeconomic disadvantage. Notably, while retirement age for females and males is becoming aligned (Strudwick & Kirkpatrick, 2013), there are still large gender differences in the type of work carried out and reasons for labour force exit (Loretto & Vickerstaff, 2013 …”

New pensioners and the surrounding social reality - the experience of retiring in Poland

“…The issue of poverty is particularly evident in the interviews with the parents of adult daughters who are single mothers. In such situations, the new pensioners are often forced by the external conditions to work after retirement -they feel obliged to help their daughters and their grandchildren, since their pensions and additional salaries serve as important financial support for the young women (on the feminization of poverty in Poland see: Arber, Davidson and Ginn 2003;Blicharz 2014;Loretto and Vickerstaff 2013;Tarkowska 2000). Given a difficult life situation, the problem of generational conflict becomes less relevant.…”