Environment and the aging woman

Sandra C. Howell

pp. 105-131

in: Irwin Altman, Arza Churchman (eds), Women and the environment, Berlin, Springer, 1994

Abstract

Entering the environments of older women affords us a unique opportunity to explore the potential of contemporary gender theories. One aspect of feminist social science is a confrontation with the older sociological construct of 'sex role," viewed as a determinant of behaviors and self-definition across the life span, and attributed to gender socialization in early life (Ferree & Hess, 1987; Riger, 1992). While gerontologists continue to argue about continuity versus discontinuity of personality in late life (Field & Millsap, 1991), an understanding of behaviors relative to the social and physical environment may well expose both the mean-inglessness of this supposed dichotomy and the intrusions of a gender-based (male) structuralization of the issues. Social scientists have, for decades, sought to describe sex differences in performance, affect, and social behavior, while deemphasizing the variabilities within each gender (Riger, 1992). This presentation will attempt to illustrate, through exemplars of class, race, cohort, marital and family status, competence, education, and environmental history, that gender-specific variability.