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Content INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type o f computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 INTERPLAY AND MEANING OF PAID AND UNPAID WORK AMONG OLDER WOMEN by Joanne Altschuler A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Social Work) December 1994 Copyright 1994 Joanne Altschuler UMI Number: 9621609 Copyright 1996 by Altschuler, Joanne All rights reserved. UMI Microform 9621609 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. A ll rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY PARK LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007 This dissertation, written by Joanne Altschuler under the direction of Jt.ec Dissertation Committee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by The Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of re quirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY d. — Dean of Graduate Studies DISSERTATION COMMITTEE Chairperson ii APRIL FOOL BIRTHDAY POEM FOR GRANDPA Today is your birthday and I have tried writing these things before, but now in the gathering madness, I want to thank you for telling me what to expect for pulling no punches, back there in that scrubbed Bronx parlor thank you for honestly weeping in time to innumerable heartbreaking italian operas for pulling my hair when I pulled the leaves off the trees so I'd know how it feels, we are involved in it now, revolution, up to our knees and the tide is rising, I embrace strangers on the street, filled with their love and mine, the love you told us had to come or we die, told them all in that Bronx park, me listening in spring Bronx dusk, breathing stars, so glorious to me your white hair, your height your fierce blue eyes, rare among italians, I stood a ways off looking up at you, my grandpa people listened to, I stand a ways off listening as I pour out soup young men with light in their faces at my table, talking love, talking revolution which is love, spelled backwards, how you would love us all, would thunder your anarchist wisdom at us, would thunder Dante, and Giordano Bruno, orderly men bent to your ends, well I want you to know we do it for you, and your ilk, for Carlo Tresca, for Sacco and Vanzetti, without knowing it, or thinking about it, as we do it for Aubrey Beardsley Oscar Wilde (all street lights shall be purple), do it for Trotsky and Shelley and big/dumb Kropotkin Eisenstein's Strike people, Jean Cocteau's ennui, we do it for the stars over the Bronx that they may look on earth and not be ashamed. - Diane di Prima, Revolutionary Letters The day is short, and the work is great. It is not your duty to complete the work, nor are you free to desist from it. - The Ethics of the Father (Pirke Avot) It takes a whole village to educate one child. - old African proverb ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the members of my research committee - Dr. Michal Mor-Barak, Dr. Karen Subramanian and Dr. Barrie Thorne - for their help, respect, and faith in my scholarship. Special thanks go to Drs. Michal Mor-Barak and Barrie Thorne who encouraged me to pursue what I felt most passionate about, as well as my desire to conduct a gualitative study. Special thanks also go to JoAnne Lowe, the inspiring and energetic job counselor of Culver City Adult School's Office Training Center, Marie Torres, doctoral student colleague and Vice President of Long Term Care of Alta Med Health Services Corporation, and Janet Witkin, friend and untiring and devoted Executive Director of Alternative Living for the Aging, who connected me with most of the study's participants. Very special thanks go to my husband, Jeff, and loyal friends who gave loving support, encouragement and wisdom during a most difficult time. Particular love and appreciation go to my son, Matthew, whose entire life has been conducted in the context of doctoral studies. I feel most grateful to the 53 women who opened their lives to me during the interview process. The way they conducted themselves before, during and, in some cases, V after the interview was over, mirrored the helping patterns and their commitment to care for others in the broadest sense of the word. Some of the women asked if I needed more subjects to participate, offered to call friends and acquaintances who are working or looking for work and might be happy to participate; others insisted on preparing me a meal when the interview took place in their homes. One woman offered to transcribe my taped interviews at night after she "got off work." The varied kindnesses and thoughtful deeds were not merely the result of enjoying the interview experience, although most of the participants voluntarily offered positive feedback about the subject matter, as well as the particular questions. Indeed, they were a reflection of and a spontaneous example of how most of these women have lived their lives and continue to do so when they can - they join, they do good deeds, they care about others. Without their participation this study would not exist. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page APRIL FOOL BIRTHDAY POEM FOR GRANDPA............... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................. iv LIST OF TABLES.................................... viii Chapter I. INTRODUCTION............................... 1 II. LITERATURE REVIEW........................... 6 Trends in Labor Force Participation......... 6 Older Women Workers......................... 8 Older Women and Poverty..................... 9 Social Security's Differential Impact on Women and Men........................... 11 Impact on Older Women....................... 14 Research on Older Workers................... 16 Research on Women and Work................. 17 Gender and Unpaid Responsibilities ......... 21 Social Gerontological Perspectives on Women, Work and Mental Health........... 30 Feminist Perspective on Aging............... 39 Feminist Theoretical Formulations on Meaning of Employment for Older Women. . . 41 Assessment of the Literature............... 48 Research Questions ......................... 51 III. METHODOLOGY................................. 53 Research Design............................ 53 The Sample................................. 58 Data Collection............................ 71 Interview Guide............................ 72 Data Analysis.............................. 73 IV. DEFINING WORK: THE WOMEN SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES................................ 77 V. PROCESS OF TAKING ON UNPAID RESPONSIBILITIES........................... 94 vii VI. INTERPLAY OF UNPAID RESPONSIBILITIES AND PAID WORK.................................. 103 VII. CENTRALITY OF PAID WORK TO IDENTITY AND MEANING. 119 VIII. CENTRALITY OF CARING TO IDENTITY AND MEANING . 126 IX. SETTING SELF-PROTECTIVE LIMITS OVER THE LIFE COURSE....................... 134 X. SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION..................... 141 Overview of the Findings................... 142 Consideration of the Findings............... 145 Strengths and Limitations ................. 158 Implications for Further Research ......... 160 XI. CONCLUSIONS............................... 162 APPENDIX.......................................... 170 A. Cover Letters........................... 171 B. Interview Guide......................... 173 REFERENCES........................................ 178 viii LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Number of Women 55 to 64 Years by Ethnicity in Los Angeles County..............................54 2. Number of Women 65 Years and Older by Ethnicity in Los Angeles County..............................54 3. Income Per Year.................................... 57 4. Education..........................................58 5. Ethnicity by Marital Status.........................59 6. Age by Marital Status.............................. 60 7. Paid Employment Status.............................61 8. Paid Employment Status by Age.......................62 9. Paid Employment Status by Ethnicity................. 63 10. Paid Occupational Categories.......................64 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION My decision to focus on the subject of older women and work emerged from my awareness of the shortage of information on this topic and from my own experiences. Having done social work with older people since 1971 in a variety of settings and capacities whetted my interest in older people. My longtime interest in gender issues has been fed and stimulated by coursework I have taken while pursuing The Graduate Certificate in USC's Study of Women and Men in Society program. At the same time, I also became aware of the absence of older women's voices in various discourses. My personal background of high involvement and commitment to such unpaid activities as door to door political campaigning; starting a community crisis telephone service; visiting and conducting individual and group discussions in a boys' reformatory and prison; visiting elderly people in nursing homes; negotiating a union contract; and organizing and reading news on a local radio station, have heightened my respect for volunteer work, broadened my view of work, and made me aware of the degree 2 of high involvement of women in unpaid activities, albeit often in the lower echelons. Finally, my job as research coordinator of a pilot study on older job seekers conducted in 1990 by Dr. Mor-Barak of USC, made me realize the dearth of research on older women workers, as well as the narrow conceptualization of work in research on older workers and women and work. For this project I did not set out to test hypotheses derived from earlier research, since there is such a paucity of research on older women and work. Instead, I followed a qualitative research model, drawing on semi-structured interviews with 53 women ages 55 and over. While the interviews touched upon many aspects of older women and work, they focused on the perceptions and meaning women made out of their paid and unpaid responsibilities. The interview discussions focused on their conceptualizations of work; the process of taking on unpaid responsibilities; the interplay of unpaid responsibilities and paid work; and the relationship of work and care activities to personal identity and meaning. 3 The Problem As the number of women in the paid work force continues to grow, there has been an expansion in the amount of interest and research addressing women's work experiences. However, until recently, very little has appeared in social science literature, in gerontological research, or in studies of women and work that addresses the meaning and conditions of work for older women in our society. The majority of studies on older workers focus on men, including guestions about retirement, re-training and use of leisure time (Henretta, Chan and 0'Rand, 1992; Reitzes, Mutran and Pope, 1992). Similarly, research on employment and women tends to focus on the effects of paid work on family life (Fox and Hess-Biber, 1984; Voydanoff, 1987; Voydanoff, 1984) (who will and how to juggle family responsibilities), the effects of multiple roles and responsibilities (Baruch, Biener and Barnett, 1987) and the need for employers' policies and services for family obligations (Kamerman and Kahn, 1987; Martin, Seymour, Courage, Godbey and Tate, 1988). In all of this literature the highest age of the oldest women generally ranges somewhere between 45 and 55 years of age, occasionally going as high as 60 (Konek and Kitch, 1993). Much of the research on women and aging has been stereotypic, raising issues focused chiefly upon the so- 4 called private sphere or home, such as the "empty nest" syndrome or adjustment to widowhood (Bankoff, 1983; Barrett, 1981). In contrast, much less attention has been given to older women's lives in the so-called public sphere or world of paid work. The literature that does focus on women and employment has tended to emphasize issues of career attainment, child-care issues and impact on children's development for younger and midlife aged women (Lerner, 1994). In addition to the fact that older women do not show the same trends toward early retirement as older males (U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, 1991), it has also been shown that compared with men of their age, older women continue to bear the bulk of unpaid responsibilities such as housework (Szinovacz and Harpster, 1994) and care of relatives and friends (Older Women's League, 1989). In short, as the age structure of the United States grows older, and as more older adults, particularly women, anticipate living longer lives, the issue and conception of work has important practice and policy implications. The purpose of this research is twofold; (1) to advance our understanding of the meaning and conditions of work for older women; (2) to develop a model of inquiry informed by both feminist and gerontological perspectives. More specifically, I have explored the following questions: 5 1. How do older women conceptualize and define work? To what extent are unpaid responsibilities considered work and by whom? 2. What differences and similarities exist among older women regarding their experiences of unpaid responsibilities? For example, how voluntary are decisions to do unpaid work? Do older women engage in more, less or the same amount of unpaid responsibilities with age? How central to their identity are paid and unpaid work experiences? 3. What impact do unpaid responsibilities have on paid work, and what impact does paid work have on unpaid responsibilities? Hopefully, the results of this study will offer insight into our understanding and knowledge about the meaning of work for older women, and may pave the way to planning interventions and developing broad policies for this growing and understudied segment of the population. 6 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW Since the body of research on older women and work is so small, I shall also examine other research that has bearing on older women and work, but for the most part leaves out older women and/or utilizes a narrow conceptualization of work. I discuss major themes and findings, and use some of the conceptualizations to formulate questions and directions that guide this research project. Trends in Labor Force Participation Of the 26 million net increase in the U.S. labor force between 1990 and 2005, women will account for 15 million or 62% of the net growth (U.S. Department of Labor, 1992). In 1990, women were 45% of the labor force. By 2005 that figure will climb to 47%. Labor force participation rates - the percentage of people of working age who are actually working or looking for work - are expected to rise for women, while those of men will continue to decline slowly. Projections also suggest that most U.S. labor force growth in the 1990's will 7 come from increased participation by minorities and middle- aged and older women (U.S. Department of Labor, 1992). One of the most striking labor force trends is the aging of the U.S. labor force. That is, while the overall growth rate of the labor force is projected to slow over the next decade, this will be very different for older workers (U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, 1991). The median age of people in the labor force is projected to rise from 36.6 years in 1990 to 40.6 years in 2005 (U.S. Department of Labor, 1992), and the percentage of the labor force of people 55 and older is projected to rise from 12.3% in 1990 to 14.7% in 2005 (U.S. Department of Labor, 1992). However, the future labor force participation rates look different for older men and women. Between 1988 and 2000, men between the ages of 55 and 65 are projected to increase their labor force participation by 1% from 67% to 68.1%, whereas women between 55 and 65 are projected to show a much sharper increase of 5.5%, with their rates rising from 43.5% in 1988 to 49% in 2000 (U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, 1991). In short, our aging labor force reflects two social trends - the U.S. population is growing older and women are entering the labor force in record numbers. Older workers, and in particular, older women workers will play an increasingly significant role in maintaining a strong labor pool and economy. 8 Older Women Workers Contrary to stereotypes, that have been in part, reinforced by the undercounting of women's employment (Bose, 1987) women have always worked out of economic necessity (Marshall and Paulin, 1987), to support themselves or households they headed. Andersen (1988) points out that while black women have historically had much longer, though not necessarily more continuous labor-force histories than white women, older women in all racial and ethnic groups have fewer economic resources compared to their male counterparts (U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, 1991; Hess, 1990). In addition, the wage gap has historically been smaller at the youngest ages. Figart (1988) points out that women's earnings peak at ages 35-44, while men's earnings peak later in life, at ages 45-54. According to the National Commission on Working Women (1990) women workers of all ages earned 65 cents for every dollar earned by men in 1989; women aged 45-64 earned only 56 cents for every dollar men earned; the wage gap between men and women is at its peak among workers 55-64 (45% wage gap). Finally, although the wage gap between men and women narrows to 75% after men and women are 65 and older, similarities in wages among older men and women are due to 9 men's lower earnings at this age rather than an increase in women's earnings (U.S. Department of Labor, 1992). Older women's presence in the paid work force doubled between 1950 and 1989. In 1950, 23% of paid labor force participants 55 and older were women. By 1989, women accounted for 43% or two out of five of the paid labor force participants 55 and older (U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, 1991). In short, older women do not show the trend toward early retirement observed among older men (Clark, 1988). Older Women and Poverty Along with greater numbers of older women holding paid jobs is the dramatic rise in the numbers and proportion of women living in poverty. In spite of a marked decline in overall poverty among the elderly since the Social Security Act passed in 1935, the elderly population as a whole has a higher poverty rate than the balance of the adult population (U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, 1991). However, when one looks at specific subgroups - women living alone, the very old, people of color - the rates rise steeply (Hess, 1987). Moreover, it is these subgroups that have been growing most rapidly in number. They represent 7 of every 10 noninstitutionalized older persons, but 9 of every 10 elderly poor people (U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, 1991). 10 These statistics and the demographics of aging have specific implications for who is currently and who is likely to continue to be most affected by poverty. Lower fertility rates and increases in life expectancy have resulted in an aging or so called "graying" of the U.S. population, and an aging of the older population itself. For example, there are currently 31 million Americans 65 and older, or 12.7% of the total population, compared to approximately 16 million in 1960 or 9% of the population. By the year 2000, it is expected that people 65 and older will constitute 13% or 35 million people. In addition, the proportion of all elderly who are 85 and older will have more than doubled between 1960 and 2000, from 5.6% to 13%. As mentioned, these demographics are due to lower fertility rates and continued life expectancy. There has also been a constantly growing difference in life expectancy between males and females. The major consequence of these trends is that the older population is overwhelmingly comprised of women (Butler et al., 1991; Hess and Harkson, 1991; U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, 1991). These statistics point to the fact that poverty in old age is largely the problem of women. In fact, it has been predicted that "by the year 2020, poverty among elderly Americans will be confined primarily to women living alone" (Glasse and Leonard, 1988). About three-fourths of all of 11 the older poor are women living alone, most of them widows. Of women age 85 and older (the fastest growing age group) 34.7% have incomes below or only slightly above the poverty level (O'Hare, 1989). And, only 20% of women have retired with private pension benefits over the past 5 years, compared to 40% of men (Older Women's League, 1990). However, raw poverty statistics tell just part of the story. Nearly a third of all women are either poor or near poor. This is the case for 59% of older Black women, 43.6% of Latinas and 29.2% of White women. When poverty is viewed by family status and living arrangement, the highest concentration of poverty is found among older women living alone - widowed, separated, divorced or never married. Nearly 1 in 4 of those women is poor, compared with 1 in 8 older women heading households and 1 in 20 living in married couple families (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1991). Social Security's Differential Impact on Women and Men Kahne (1981) points out that economic security in later life depends on occupational and work history patterns, marital history, health, education, personal financial decisions and the extent of paid work after retirement. She further indicates that choices made, inflationary cycles of the economy, and receiving retirement income from more than one source all contribute to an older person's economic wellbeing. 12 It has been demonstrated that women are disadvantaged on several of these factors: their work patterns are less continuous than men's; their wages are lower; private pension coverage is less frequent and their present benefits are lower than those of men; the value of asset income for women is low, especially if they are not married (Older Women's League, 1990; Rayman and Allshouse, 1990). Social security benefits are the major source of income for older people. More than 90%, including 19.4 million women aged 62 and older, receive Social Security income (Sidel, 1986). Social Security contributes about 42.5% of the income that individuals 65 and older receive, with the poor and near poor individuals and families far more reliant on it than the non poor (U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, 1991). In fact, 60% of all older women depend on Social Security as their only source of income (Older Women's League, 1990). In spite of the fact that Social Security remains for women the major and often only source of retirement economic security (O'Grady-LeShane, 1990; Kahne, 1981), women's protection is inadequate, despite almost universal coverage, the absence of gender differentiation in computing benefits, and the similar treatment of benefits in relation to average earnings for men and women even though women live longer. In other words, although Social Security is gender neutral in 13 its language, it is not so in its outcome- benefits paid to women are significantly less than those paid to men. In 1984 men received an average benefit of $521 a month compared to $440 for women (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1989) Abramovitz (1988) points out that while the Social Security Act of 1935 promoted economic recovery and security, it also encoded traditional female work and family ideology into its provisions. She points out the gender bias structured into the program and how that has enforced economic dependence of women on men, regulated women's labor force participation, assured women's participation in maintaining and reproducing the labor force, and in general, upheld patriarchal social arrangements. Abramovitz (1988) cites several examples: women predominated among occupations excluded from the Social Security Act; women included under 1939 amendments were brought in largely as the economic dependents of male workers; women who were covered often were ineligible for a pension because of moving in and out of paid work to do unpaid work, i.e. take care of marriage and family responsibilities. In short, the Social Security Act was devised with a family in mind that consisted of a lifelong homemaker, and two children. The Older Women's League (1990) points out that less than 10% of American families fit that definition today. In spite of women's increasing participation in the 14 paid work force, including some change in gaps in employment rates between Black and White, married and unmarried, and mothers and childless women (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1988; Tauber and Valdisera, 1986), Social Security benefits continue to favor the wife at home. It discriminates against women by penalizing dual earner families, caregivers, divorced spouses, and people who retire early and live long. Impact on Older Women Kahne (1985-86) has argued that labor force participation is the prime determinant of a person's standard of living, not only during one's worklife, but in retirement, and not only for oneself but for one's dependents. While paid employment is an important area of need for older people, the problems faced in this area by older women appear to be far more grave than for older men (Herz, 1989). It has been shown (Kahne, 1985-86; Older Women's League, 1990; Rayman and Allshouse, 1990; Herz, 1989) that several factors result in retirement age women continuing and increasing their paid labor force participation, in addition to their being severely economically disadvantaged. These factors are as follows: 1) occupational segregation: being crowded into traditionally female occupations which pay less than traditionally male occupations; 2) women earn less than men; 3) older women 15 continue to be the primary caregivers for children and other relatives; 4) unemployment rates that include numbers of discouraged workers are higher for women than men; 5) retirement income for women - both social security and private pensions - is less adequate than for men. The latter may account for men's declining labor force participation rates, and for increasing paid work rates among older women. Older women's lower social security benefits are due to lower earnings, lack of credit for benefits because of unpaid work, and divorce status. With respect to pensions, which can distinguish the aged poor from non poor, it has been shown that women tend to work in industries of services and retail trade, nonunionized firms and small companies where private pensions are less prevalent (Calasanti, 1988). It has also been shown that even when they are covered, they receive less income than men since private pensions favor lengthy and continuous employment (Older Women's League, 1990). And, because size of pension is linked to wages, women's benefits are about half those of men (Meier, 1986). To summarize, the demographics suggest that both old (lifelong) and new (occurring for the first time in old age) poverty is likely to increase as a result of the years that women spend outside of paid work to do unpaid work such as caregiving, the unequal pay women receive in the paid work 16 force, the peripheral work that many women accept that reduces their access to pensions and Social Security, and the likelihood that women will spend part of their old age alone. Research on Older Workers In spite of the bleak economic picture for older women, and their increased labor force participation, the status of older women's paid employment has been largely neglected by researchers in the fields of gerontology and women's studies (Shaw and Shaw, 1987; Congressional Quarterly, 1981). Research on aging has tended to make generalizations from male samples to the total population. For example, the body of literature on retirement has drawn conclusions about both genders from mostly male samples, thus establishing male behavior as "normal" (Havighurst et al., 1969; George and Maddox, 1977). At best, this minimizes aspects of aging that are unique and significant to women, and at worst, it suppresses attention to actual gender differences and similarities. Inclusion of women as subjects for investigation developed mostly around the 1970's, and only recent research on retirement, for example, has acknowledged its meaning and importance to women, as well as the differential experience of retirement for women and men, e.g. (Atchley, 1976; Calasanti, 1984; Fox, 1977; Matthews and Brown, 1987; 17 Szinovacz, 1982, 1983). In short, studies of older workers have concentrated on men's work lives, including questions about retirement, discrimination, re-training and mental health (Bosse et al., 1987; Elder and Pavalko, 1993; Hayward et al, 1988; Parnes and Sommers, 1994; Wolfson et al., 1993) . One of the few recent studies that included older female workers examined older women's adjustment to unemployment (Rife, Toomey and First, 1989). It was found that the men and women differed significantly in various characteristics. For example, women had less education than men, had worked for a shorter period of time for their most recent employer and had fewer family supports to help alleviate financial or emotional pressures during unemployment. Also, women were more likely to blame themselves for being unemployed, e.g. low skills, in contrast to the men's tendency to cite a lack of available job opportunities as being responsible for their current unemployment. Research on Women and Work There is a large body of social science research from the last two decades that focuses on connections between work and family. Bohen and Viveros-Long (1981) enumerate four major topics that dominated sociological and psychological studies concerning the relationship between 18 work and family: female employment, housework, childrearing, and the division of labor in marriage. Some of this research has been conducted within the domain of occupational stress (see, for example, Eckenrode and Gore, 1990). Lewis (1992) observes that "the majority of psychological research relating to work and family in the 1970's and 1980's concerned the impact on families of (mostly male) unemployment and maternal employment." She interprets this to be a reflection of social and organizational values "in which the male breadwinner and female child-rearing roles are idealized". Research on the work-family interface is an example of so-called objective terminology in social science research with sexist underpinnings. In most cases, it is not families that juggle or balance work and home; it is women in families. And, more often than not, this literature has focused on younger and middle aged women with children at home. Older women have been mostly invisible in this body of research except as recipients of care (Goldsmith, 1989; Neal et al., 1993; Moen, 1992). With the increased number of women in virtually all levels of the paid work force, greater attention and research have been given to women's work experiences. A large number of studies have focused on how and why women 19 choose to do paid work, emphasizing changes in economic and social conditions (Astin, 1984; Oppenheimer, 1982), in addition to emphasizing the marginalization of women in the areas of class and work (Gamarnikow, Morgan, Purvis and Taylorson, 1983). These studies point out that women work for many of the same reasons that men do - to earn a living and function as productive members of society. Other studies have identified significant patterns that characterize women's lives who work in paid jobs, as well as insights into women's experiences in the actual paid work site (Fox and Hess-Biber, 1984; Kanter, 1977). These studies have focused on societal and institutional constraints in women's paid work experiences. In the spirit of such studies as Gerson (1985) and Ruddick and Daniels (1977), Chester and Grossman (1990) point out the need for more research that focuses on "the phenomenological experience of work for women; that is, studies that focus on how women view themselves as workers, how they experience their work, and the meaning they make of it in the context of the rest of their lives." However, even this literature ignores older women (see, for example, Konek and Kitch, 1993; Lerner, 1994; Lunneborg, 1990). Chester and Grossman (1990) underscore the overly narrow definition of what constitutes work. They point out that using the definition of work as the production of goods and 20 view of "women being involved in work throughout a good part of their waking hours, whether or not they are being paid." While there is a need for research that "looks for a deeper understanding of women workers' realities by including the meaning women make of their own experiences," research on women workers has largely neglected older women. The few studies that have focused on midlife and older women workers have shown that factors influencing younger women's employment remain the same for the older group (Blau, 1978; Shaw, 1983; Shaw, 1986); namely, economic need. They also cite issues that interfere with their obtaining jobs such as age discrimination, inadequate education, and living in areas where there is high unemployment or not many jobs available that are typically held by women. In addition to economic need, Rayman (1987) suggests that women work to maintain self-esteem, to have peer support and to utilize their skills and interests. Rayman and Allshouse (1990) conducted a series of focus groups with a sample of 29 older, primarily minority women. "The heart of the...groups were...discussions of the meaning of work for the women, discriminatory practices found in their workplaces, identification of social support networks, and hopes and fears regarding work and aging." 21 Gender and Unpaid Responsibilities Women's clear presence in paid jobs brings into focus the interdependence of family and the paid work force. It is my contention that in order to get a more accurate picture of what paid work means for older women, as well as how older women make employment choices, there must be a more accurate understanding of the meaning of the home context of their lives, and its relationship to paid work. For example, many core jobs are designed to be filled by a man who has a wife to manage the household (Hochschild, 1975; Ranter, 1977). Not only do women generally not have such support, but when both men and women work for money women still do more of the housework (Hochschild, 1989; Hartmann, 1981). The unpaid responsibilities performed primarily by women have not traditionally been defined as work (Daniels, 1987). Typically referred to as "women's work" - housework and care of relatives and friends - is invisible until or unless it is neglected. In fact, Daniels (1987) discusses the hesitation and ambivalence among women about conceptualizing some of their activities as work. Feminist studies of housework have shown that we cannot conceive of women's work only in terms of paid labor. Because the concept of work has been tied to the idea of paid employment, until recent decades women's work as 22 paid employment, until recent decades women's work as housewives and caregivers had long gone unrecognized as work, even though it is socially and economically necessary. The work women do takes care of people's basic needs and socializes new members of society. In fact, not only are there trends to assign economic value to women's unpaid work, but political groups, such as the International Wages for Housework Campaign, have lobbied for including women's unwaged work in the GNP. Such legislation has been introduced in the U.S. Congress (HR 966), as well as British Parliament (see also Jacobson, 1992). HR 966, "The Unremunerated Work Act," would require the Bureau of Labor Statistics to count and value the unwaged work done by women and men, and include in the Gross National Product (now Gross Domestic Product) the value of that work to the U.S. economy. It has been argued that including unpaid labor in the GNP would change the perception that women and their unpaid labor are unproductive. It is consequently hoped that such a change in perception would result in women's needs and demands being taken more seriously. It has also been argued that this unpaid labor benefits employers, too, because it sustains workers, making it possible for them to return to the paid labor force (Benston, 1969). Popular images of housework mask the fact 23 and psychologically demanding, even though it can be a source of satisfaction. Studies of housewives' roles show that it is complex and fragile. Davis (1981), for example, points out that many Black, Asian, Hispanic and working class women have never been housewives only because they have worked at two jobs - unpaid at home, paid in the labor force - to support their families. Even for heterosexual women in economically privileged classes, the affluent housewife's position is based on the continuous economic and emotional support of their husbands. Weitzman (1985) points out that sudden death, divorce or economic crisis can quickly push an affluent housewife into a poor woman who has to figure out how to support herself and her family. Hence, the popular feminist slogan that "women are only a divorce away from poverty." In our modern economy, housework is organized as a private service that women provide for men and children. Yet, women's work as housewives is not inevitable. It has been shown to be a historically specific development that is tied to the modern structure of economic and household relations (Boydston, 1990). Cross cultural evidence shows that women are not inevitably domestic (Malbin-Glazer, 1976). in short, the modern role and ideology of the housewife who is isolated and dependent in the private home 24 is a specific consequence of the historical transition to industrial capitalism (Zaretsky, 1976). Unpaid responsibilities contribute to women's secondary or subordinate position and to their powerlessness because free work is less visible than paid work in a wage economy. The fact that a woman works for free doing housework and caregiving affects the expectations of others and herself in her willingness to accept any wages offered. In fact, much of the paid work that women do is often an extension of what is already done for free. When work is done for free, it can be interpreted as someone's nature and taken for granted, resulting in little social status and no economic independence. In contrast, when something is acknowledged or defined as a job, it may be less likely to be assumed to be someone's nature which makes it no longer invisible. In short, working without a wage in a wage economy makes a job non-existent from the point of view of the boss, whether husband or employer. Finally, when women continuously do caregiving and housework for free, it may diminish their right to refuse to do it, ultimately resulting in all women being defined as housewives and caregivers. Given this unequal sexual division of labor in the home, with women most frequently doing housework and caregiving, and men and children reaping the benefits, one 25 might expect that waged work would liberate women. However, as previously mentioned, when a woman works for wages outside the home, not only is it often another area of exploitation, but she ends up doing a second shift when she goes home (Berk, 1985; Hartmann, 1981; Hochschild, 1989). In short, in spite of the fact that most women work for money to support themselves or their family or to bring in extra money (Roper Organization, 1985), women remain chiefly responsible for unpaid work responsibilities. The tangible effects of this dilemma tend to be masked in the literature on women and work, by reducing the dilemma to a problem of multiple role juggling (Freeman, Logan, and McCoy, 1987). In addition, much of the sociological research literature's attention to unpaid responsibilities (Coleman, 1988; Scanzoni, 1982; Statham and Larrick, 1986) focuses on the patterns of who does what, how much, and under what conditions. This literature is largely based on a family model that is no longer dominant - a "working" husband, "nonworking" wife and children (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1988). It also takes the unpaid work for granted, automatically focusing on questions of how it is divided, or exploring strategies of coping. Literature that views unpaid responsibilities as a matter of exchange between spouses or as a source of personal or family strain appears to ignore the structural 26 issue of the economy's investment in having a group of people do this unpaid work so as to maintain a supply of cheap labor. Furthermore, these articles tend to focus dichotomously. Regarding women, the focus is on the burden or strain of juggling paid and unpaid work; for men, the focus is on why they cannot or do not want to do unpaid responsibilities. As Hochschild (1989) points out, such an approach "reveals the visible surface" of a complex set of issues. She points out that such an approach ignores the less visible, more complex and emotional issues that underlie relationships, such as how decisions are made, the degree of appreciation, resentment, power and tension experienced, and whether there are coping strategies unique to each gender. Embedded in this literature appears to be an assumption that women do unpaid responsibilities because it is their nature - they are better at it, it comes more naturally, they like it. Mainstream studies of housework and women and work do not question why women do the majority of unpaid work, or its meaning to those who do it. Feminist studies have pointed out the negative economic consequences for women of unpaid responsibilities. This sexual division of labor helps perpetuate inequality in the paid labor force, as evidenced by research that for both men and women, there is an inverse relationship between time spent in domestic 27 labor and wages (Coverman, 1983). Finally, and not least of all, this literature ignores the needs and experiences of many older women who continue working past 55 years of age. In addition to doing unpaid housework, most women are also caregivers - to children, grandchildren, friends, neighbors and/or impaired or aged relatives. As with the literature on women and work, and research on employment and older workers, older women's continued caregiving responsibilities have been largely neglected in social gerontological theory and research. With few exceptions (see e.g. Roberto, 1993; Minkler and Roe, 1993; Arber and Ginn, 1990), older women are cast and come to be seen as passive recipients in studies of informal care or caregiving literature. Or, their caregiving efforts are relegated to the area of wives versus husbands (see Stoller, 1992). Regarding the effects of unpaid caregiving, women report being less geographically mobile after losing a job because of responsibility for elderly relatives in their community (Nowak and Snyder, 1986). Of related interest, recent research (Pastorello, Koldin, and D'Agnola, 1989) indicates that far more women (52%) than men (10%) report caregiving related problems in their paid work setting, with caregiving creating job interruptions and exhaustion. This latter paper accounted for gender differences by "men's 28 greater freedom to rearrange their job schedules... and by the caregiving assistance... from their wives.” Another study (Brody and Schoonover, 1986) found no difference between employed and non-employed daughters in the amount of care provided to their disabled, widowed, community-dwelling mothers. However, for two types of tasks - meal preparation and personal care - working daughters did less than non-employed daughters, but arranged for these services to be provided by others, most often through purchased services. Thus, the trend of increasing female labor force participation does not appear to be leading to a reduction in daughters' provision of care for frail mothers. Sankar (1993) observes that policy makers "employ a model of labor derived from industrial production in which a "job" can be broken down into its constituent parts and the resulting "pieces" assigned to various workers." This approach presupposes that "the laborer...has little intrinsic connection to the overall process or to the fruits of her labors." Sankar further points out that research efforts in the area of caregiver stress often reflect and/or reinforce similar underlying assumptions, noting that "studies of caregiver stress often break down the work of caregiving into discrete tasks. From this formulation...and structuring of the data, it logically follows that a series 29 of discrete tasks can be easily substituted for specific services." This kind of approach ignores the experiences, meanings and ongoing process of caregiving as a whole. And, as with nonfeminist studies on housework, it ignores the ideology of caregiving as "women's work" as well as its invisible nature. Recent feminist studies have contributed to the caregiving literature by expanding the concept of care from something concrete and related to tasks, to a process that is filled with complex meaning and experience (DeVault, 1991? Abel and Nelson, 1990). They grapple with the contradictory insight about work that women do in the context of family life - while it can be burdensome and exploitative, it can also be meaningful, as a vehicle and reflection of being connected to others. Feminist researchers have also been addressing the lack of accurate language to convey the various meanings of caring work. For example, Abel and Nelson (1990) and Finch and Groves (1983) talk about "caring about, an emotional, personal dimension of the activity." At the same time, Sacks and Remy (1984) have demonstrated that service jobs are often dismissed as menial work. They point out that the ongoing coordination tasks performed by hospital service and 30 clerical workers that are crucial to the delivery of care, are both unpaid for and unacknowledged. Social Gerontological Theories on Women. Work and Mental Health Social gerontological theory and research has only recently begun to understand diverse experiences among the elderly, particularly old women and women of color. Initially, this "enterprise" was chiefly the product of white, western, middle class experiences, with the gerontology researchers and subjects being largely younger and male. Theories of aging encompass broad perspectives that include micro and macro level issues. Thus, they blend biological, sociological, psychological, cultural, political and economic factors and perspectives. Three of these theories that are most helpful in explaining the relationship between work and mental health for older adults are social exchange theory, political economy of aging and continuity theory. With roots in behavioral psychology and economics, exchange theory applied to gerontology has aimed at understanding the status and power of older people in society (Dowd, 1975). It presumes a need for a rebalancing of exchange relationships as a primary consequence of the 31 aging process. Changes are analyzed in terms of realignments of personal relationships brought on by reevaluation of an older person's roles, skills, contributions and interpersonal value. This theory views power as the basis of social status, privileges and opportunities, asserting that older people lose power because of the reduction or loss of resources such as status, money and skills. From this perspective, decreased access to power resources underlies older people's declining status, rather than their desire to disengage or their ability to remain active in roles or situations characteristic of middle age. Thus, older people become helpless and have only one asset left to trade: submission and acknowledged dependence on those with controlled valued resources. Exchange theory applies to work and mental health for older adults in several ways. Society's accrued power advantage is reflected in the economic and social dependency of older people who may have outmoded work skills. In the framework of exchange theory, they are left with little to exchange that is of value, and they are forced to accept retirement in exchange for limited social services, pensions and Medicare. In other words, the final exchange for many older workers is their compliance - retirement - as exchange 32 for maintenance - Social Security benefits, private pensions. From this perspective, the problem of older workers may not only be their diminished skills, but the very real possibility that they were never trained initially in skills that are currently marketable. Thus, the older worker's supply of resources that define power may be meager to begin with; therefore, upon retirement, the bargaining position of older workers quickly diminishes as their supply of power resources is depleted. In sum, exchange theory applied to work and older adults views the problems of aging as problems of decreasing power resources. They are seen as having too little to exchange of any practical value. Skills they once possessed are outmoded and skills that remain can be provided more efficiently and less expensively by others. What would enhance this perspective is the addition of political economic dimensions in order to shift away from early applications to social support, family interaction, status decline and self-concept, to more macro level analyses that could make broader contributions. This perspective also assumes the importance of loss as a crucial and inevitable backdrop of old age. More empirical research is needed to determine the value of exchange theory as an explanation of the aging process in general. 33 While social exchange predicts decreasing participation with age in major social interactions because of loss of power, Minkler and Estes7 (1984) theory of the political economy of aging proposes that social, political and economic conditions affect how social problems are defined and treated. Basic to this approach is the argument that social class is a structural barrier to older people's access to valued resources, and that dominant groups try to sustain their own interests by perpetuating class inequities. Thus, the process of aging is not so much the problem, as are the societal conditions that older people face such as inadequate income, housing and health care. This perspective asserts that national social and economic policies e.g. Social Security, are the key determinants of the conditions of life of older people. It attributes diminished status and problems of older people, particularly women, to corporate capitalism, attributing diminished status and economic circumstances of older people to the state assuming responsibility for their maintenance. Thus, the issues of public pensions and public burden become relevant issues. This perspective is less a theory of individual attributes and processes than a macro analysis of structural properties that determine how people adapt in old age. The major strength of this approach is its focus on larger socio 34 political (structural) conditions that generate separate social policies and foster marginality and separateness of older people. Implicit in this perspective is the notion of a moral economy of aging (Minkler and Estes, 1991). This recently articulated concept refers to shared societal assumptions underlying the norms of reciprocity on which an economy is grounded. Applied to older adults, work and mental health, this perspective raises issues such as what a society perceives is due or owed its older workers who have contributed to society. It enriches the political economy framework in analyzing debates over the allocation of resources between generations i.e. Social Security. The major limitation is its lack of empirical research. Much of social gerontological research has focused on predicting adjustment or adaptation in old age. Literature in the 1960's and 1970's was dominated by studies that assessed the feasibility of disengagement and activity theories, with the measures of life satisfaction or morale used as key dependent variables. Disengagement theory (Cumming and Henry, 1961) posits an inevitable decline in abilities and preoccupation with death that results in disengagement, suggesting that older people and society mutually withdraw from each other as part of normal aging. Activity theory (Havighurst, 1963, 1968; Rose, 1964; Rosow, 35 1963) asserts that except for biological changes, older people are the same as anyone else. To successfully age, older people must stay involved and find substitutes for work and other significant losses. Interest in successful aging was initially generated by the disengagement versus activity theory debate. The shortcomings of the disengagement and activity theories led to the development of a third social- psychological theory of adaptation in old age. According to continuity theory (Neugarten, Havighurst and Tobin, 1968) successful aging consists of middle aged and older adults continuing and maintaining their early behavior patterns and coping strategies. This enables them to preserve and continue personally meaningful identity and life. This perspective helps account for why people may choose to remain in what others might consider deteriorated, but familiar surroundings, instead of new and supposedly "better" ones. Thus, personality plays a major role in adjusting to aging. Individuals provide their own standards for successful aging, rather than try to adjust to a common norm. The importance of maintaining an internal sense of continuity in identity has been pointed out in research by Lieberman and Tobin (1983), Kaufman (1986) and Hyerhoff (1979). Atchley extends this observation by pointing out 36 that one adapts by choosing to preserve both internal and external structures as long as possible. This perspective underscores the view that people become more, not less of who they are as they age. Applied to older workers and mental health, continuity theory maintains that the loss of a job may look like a discontinuity to an observer, whether the loss was voluntarily or involuntarily incurred. However, whether discontinuity and how much is experienced by the older person depends on their ability to rework and expand their conception of work in other ways. Atchley (1989) gives the example of a musician who could potentially shift from playing music to booking concerts. This would preserve the identity of music and continuity of environment and relationships by shifting to another aspect of that domain. Another example might be an older adult defining unpaid responsibilities as work, or going through a training program to acguire a new skill. Continuity theory has mostly examined continuity in the context of social activity, and does not elaborate on the broader meaning of continuity over the course of an individual's life. Moreover, its focus on meaning, lifelong patterns and the individual as the unit of focus and analysis does not lend itself to the quantitative methodology and survey approach that has dominated 37 gerontology research. Continuity theory needs empirical testing. However, the complexity and individual focus "require the researcher to act as a clinician/recorder....It requires a more qualitative, intensive, interview oriented methodology" (Huyck, 1989). The inclusion of women is necessary for and expands our understanding of social reality. While each of these three theoretical perspectives offers insight into older workers and mental health, older women's work experiences are different from and disadvantaged in many ways compared to older men. These theories do not address these differences. The addition of a feminist perspective might address these differences. For example, while social exchange theory highlights the loss of societally valued resources as the cause of older people's loss of power, the factors may differ for men and women. Men may experience decreased income through marriage, while women may experience increased economic security through marriage, and poverty or near poverty level income through divorce or widowhood. Women experience loss of personal resources like beauty at an earlier age than men (Sontag, 1972). They also tend to experience lifelong powerlessness due to being clustered in low status and peripheral economy jobs. 38 Race and class further intensify the gaps described regarding paid employment and poverty level income. In sum, because the paid work histories of men and women are so different, they enter old age with very different resources, including private and public pensions, assets, marital partners and even societally defined beauty. Thus, for older women, diminished access to resources and less power are not so much the result of old age and retirement, as it is a cumulative lifelong process. As it has been pointed out (Herz, 1989; Nuccio, 1989; Kahne, 1985-86; Older Women's League, 1990; Rayman and Allshouse, 1990), women earn less than men, they are crowded into traditionally female occupations, they continue to be the primary caregivers of children and other relatives, their retirement income is less adequate than for men, and they experience job discrimination as a combination of ageism, sexism and racism. The political economy of aging theory highlights societal conditions and social problems such as poverty for older males and females. However, the paths leading to their poverty may greatly differ. Using the example of employment, men may experience decreased, but sufficient income through loss of work, while women's lifelong lower wages and economic resources, combined with greater longevity, translates into a need to continue paid work, as well as 39 greater economic dependence on government in old age for subsistence. Regarding the role of national economic policies as a key determinant of the lives of older people, there is a marked difference and disadvantage for older women compared to older men with respect to Social Security. Social Security benefits male work patterns and enforces women's economic dependence on men, in spite of changed family demographics - high divorce rates, single parents, unmarried. As mentioned earlier, older women receive lower benefits than men, and it discriminates against women by penalizing dual earner families, caregivers, divorced spouses, people who retire early and live long. Continuity theory appears to be more compatible with regard to older women and work, because of its individual focus. It avoids the limitation of a "one size fits all" theoretical approach. The methodology needed to test continuity theory is compatible with examining the experiences of older women since it focuses on observing and understanding meaning in the context of a person's life, rather than observing behavior outside its social context. Feminist Perspective on Aging A feminist perspective on older women asserts that the lack of power and status that are characteristic of older women results from the limited options open to them earlier 40 in life. What women can do and be are more limited compared to men. Women are supposed to be attractive to men and do work for them and their children. Sontag (1972) points out that their aging - which socially, begins earlier than for men - marks the end of their social usefulness, and results in being widowed and being seen as unattractive. Even women who do not conform to society's expectations of heterosexuality and marriage are considered failures as women. Thus, in a society that oppresses all women, the devaluation and powerlessness of older women is more intense, and can be seen as the continuation of living in a sexist society. In fact, Nett (1982) proposes that the reason older people have such low status is because so many of them are females. As Gee and Kimball (1987) point out, this would mean that "ageism is a byproduct of sexism." In short, a feminist perspective on older women views the problems they face as being socially imposed. Nett (1982) is critical of gerontological theories that locate the "problems" that aging represents to our society as being in the elderly themselves. In a spirit put forward by feminists, she argues that older people should refuse to accept blame for victimization. Nett (1982) rejects looking within, as well as biological causes, in asking why old women are still 41 relatively the poorest and most in need of income, housing, health care and long term care. She proposes changes in structural factors - economic, social, political - as a focus for both explanation and change. Her approach suggests that the central issue of aging is the issue of control - "over the social resources of wealth and knowledge, and... our bodies....1 1 Nett's argument highlights the importance of control in research on aging women; for example, examining and correcting - decoding - so-called objective terminology in gerontological research with sexist underpinnings. An example of this is "family caregiving." In most cases, it is not families that "care for" the elderly; it is women in families. Nett also points out another research implication - the importance of actively encouraging older women to speak for themselves in order to define, describe and explain the meaning of their lives and the people and events therein. Feminist Theoretical Formulations on Meaning of Kmnlovment for Older Women Feminist theory starts with and values women's experiences and treats gender as a basic category of analysis, not simply a variable. There is not one, but many 42 feminist theories, "with each one attempting to describe women's oppression, explain its causes and consequences and prescribe strategies for women's liberation" (Tong, 1989). As an example, although the facts of employment - a division of labor by gender within the paid work force in which women occupy the lower paid and lower status jobs - are not disputed by different theoretical perspectives, each analyzes this social reality in a somewhat different way. As previously discussed, the pattern of labor for most women is a tapestry of unpaid responsibilities and paid work. While much of women's labor -unpaid responsibilities- has not been officially counted in the gross national product, feminist theory has argued and illustrated its value as work. Similar to social gerontology, the "enterprise" of feminist theory has only recently begun to address and include experiences of older women and women of color. Initially, it was chiefly the product of white, western, middle class experiences, with the feminist writers and theoreticians being largely younger, white females. While each of the major feminist theoretical perspectives includes an implicit or explicit analysis of race and class, none of them includes an understanding of age as a system of oppression. By not systematically including age, one can echo Andersen's (1988) observation that "we have yet to 43 develop feminist theory that is truly inclusive of women's experience.1 1 Nonetheless, liberal feminism and socialist feminism offer great insight into our understanding of older women and work. Liberal feminism, which has a rational and legal emphasis, focuses on individual, "natural" rights, asserting that each person should be considered as a separate individual, rather than as fundamentally determined by gender, race or other social characteristics. Liberal feminists argue that women have the same rational capacities as men, and that any differences in exercising individual rights are because of women's subordination. The classic formulation of this perspective is in Wollstonecraft (1972) and Mill (1970), with Friedan (1974) being a popular contemporary proponent. Liberal feminists see blocked opportunities, the denial of rights and sex discrimination as the keys to women's oppression. Any gender differences can be changed by altering women's circumstances and education. To that end, they historically have fought for formal equality under the law, including the right to vote, enter the paid work force, get an education, own property in marriage and control their own bodies. Liberal feminism views job distribution through equal opportunity as a means of maximizing every person's 44 contribution to society. To that end, they have called for the elimination of protective labor laws that kept women from better paying jobs, and greater access for women in business, politics, education. They have spearheaded reforms within existing political and legal channels, with emphasis on receiving equal pay for equal work, equal pay for jobs of comparable worth, access to job training and full educational opportunities, and eligibility for credit. Liberal feminism's strengths are undeniable. It has spearheaded and is largely responsible for many, if not most, of the educational and legal reforms that have improved the quality of life for women. Without their efforts, it is doubtful whether women could have attained the professional and occupational levels they have. However, although anti-discrimination legislation - Title VII (for women) and ADEA (for older people) exist, it has been shown that the interaction of gender and age places older women in a category that falls through the cracks and leaves them inadequately covered by the two laws. The Older Women's League (1982) uses this scenario as an illustration: A 60 year old woman applies for an entry level job at a bank and is turned down. She may have been rejected because she is a woman, or because she is too old. However, chances are that it is because she is both older and female. If she complains to the EEOC on the basis of sex discrimination, 45 the bank can defend itself by pointing out lots of female employees (tellers and clerks under 30). If she claims age discrimination, the bank can point to all the employees over 40 (males in management). Thus, employers can discriminate against older women and escape prosecution under existing laws. The shortcoming of liberal feminism is that it is weak in its analysis of the interaction of gender, class, age and race in the social structure. Reform alone has not freed women. As a theory, socialist feminism supersedes liberal feminism in its explanatory power of women's oppression. Socialist feminism originated in the 1970's as an attempt to synthesize theoretical aspects from both Marxist traditions and radical feminism. Although socialist feminists emphasize historical contexts, class exploitation and the centrality of labor, they additionally view women as being subordinated in realms that are neglected by traditional Marxists such as sexuality and childbearing, i.e. in families and private life. They see women's oppression as located in both capitalism and patriarchy. In seeking to understand and account for women's condition, Mitchell (1971) argued that Marxist feminists overemphasized the structures of production, radical feminists overemphasized reproduction and sexuality, and 46 liberal feminists overemphasized the socialization of children. Similar to Mitchell, Jaggar (1983) maintained that there are only complex explanations for female oppression, and that all four structures must be taken into account. Tong (1990) states that Jaggar "used the...concept of alienation to explain how under capitalism, everything, i.e. work, sex and play, and everyone, i.e. family and friends, that could be a source of... integration...instead becomes a source of her disintegration." Thus, the emphasis of socialist feminism is on integrating all aspects of women's lives, as well as producing a unified feminist theory. Socialist feminism is as concerned with women's work in the home as with women's work in the paid labor force, essentially viewing them as interdependent systems. Socialist feminist theory rejects the traditional split between private sphere (home) and public life (workplace), arguing that domestic work is, in fact, work. Shifting and expanding upon Marxist theory, it points out how sex segregation in the paid labor setting tends to force women into a subordinate position at home, thus reinforcing both capitalism and male dominance. Reskin and Hartmann (1986) illustrate the latter point in their discussion of how cultural beliefs about gender and work have been used "to exclude women from the workplace, to 47 restrict them to certain occupations, or to condition their wage labor." Socialist feminists argue that it is necessary to reevaluate the work that women do, redefining the equal pay issue as an issue of equal pay for comparable work (as do liberal feminists). Sokoloff (1980) conveys this perspective when she argues that women's position in paid labor can be changed only when it is recognized that women who work for pay, regardless of marital status or having children, are viewed, and may view themselves, as working mothers. Sokoloff explains this in several ways. First, women enter the labor market to fulfill their duty in the home - to obtain money to buy goods and services for their families that previous generations of women used to produce in the home. Secondly, once in a paid job, all women are treated as former, actual or potential mothers. Finally, as paid workers, women continue or are expected to do "mothering" on the job (See also Hochschild, 1983). Regarding political goals and issues, socialist feminists have worked on some of the same issues as liberal feminists - subordination of women in wage work, and in housework and childcare. But they believe that liberal reforms, even if achieved, will not fully emancipate women. Social change must be more profound. 48 Socialist feminism explains a lot about the interplay of gender and class; however, it leaves out a corresponding awareness and analysis of cultural and racial differences, and sexuality and age i.e. the experience of all women is tied to the development of class relations. For example, Andersen (1988) points out that the economic perspective of socialist feminism reminds us that the liberation of White women from domestic labor has been dependent on the availability of Black and other minority domestic workers, although this fact is often left out of feminist analyses. Analyses that understand that race, class and gender relations fundamentally structure all of our lives are increasing. However, those that include age are rare (See Calasanti and Zajicek, 1993 for an exception). But the addition of these two feminist perspectives to gerontological theory expands insights about older women and challenges us to incorporate gender relations into gerontology research. Assessment of the Literature The above discussion points out that women 55 and older fall through the cracks in salient bodies of literature. They have been neglected in several domains of work-related research: gerontological literature on older workers; social science literature on women and work; feminist analyses of 49 paid work and unpaid responsibilities? gerontological studies about female caregivers. Macro level research provides a context for understanding social historical trends, material circumstances and growth in this segment of the population. Extreme poverty, limited employment opportunities, and lifelong caregiving responsibilities are only part of the circumstances older women often face. Knowledge about the meaning of ongoing work experiences to older women, its relationship to identity, as well as shifts in work and identity values over the course of time is virtually non existent. The conceptual cracks or weaknesses in the salient bodies of research can be addressed in several ways: by conducting studies about older women and work? by expanding the narrow conceptualization of work to include both paid and unpaid responsibilities? by conducting studies that allow and encourage older women to speak for themselves? by including as diverse a population of women as possible? and by expanding an overly narrow conceptualization of care to include complexities related to meaning, experience and values. What emerges from this discussion is a need to define and understand the work experiences of elderly women - patterns that are widely shared as well as diversity in this 50 group. Studies are needed that focus on how older women view themselves as workers, how they experience their work, and the meaning they make of it in the context of the rest of their lives. Incorporating approaches illustrated by Kaufman (1986) and advocated by Nett (1982), this can be accomplished by seeking to understand the various meanings of work for older women, as well as the work-related similarities and differences among older women themselves. Nett (1982) advocates the importance of actively encouraging older women to speak for themselves in order to define, describe and explain the meaning of their lives and the people and events therein. Kaufman (1986) illustrates older people's "ability to reformulate lifelong values so that they...promote a sense of continuity of self...." (p.148). Informed by socialist feminist theory, I begin by defining employment broadly enough to include various forms of necessary, but unpaid responsibilities, such as housework and care for others. Adding the framework of continuity theory, I hypothesize that maintaining a sense of continuity with the past, or reestablishing one is critical to an older person's sense of identity and meaning. In that context, I wonder if their "narratives to the self" make work and caring central. 51 I believe that trying to understand the meaning of paid work and unpaid responsibilities to elderly women would illuminate some understanding of successful aging and living. For example, do older women consider unpaid responsibilities to be work? If so, for whom and why? If not, for whom and why not? Do elderly women engage in more, less or the same amount of unpaid responsibilities as they age? Why and why not? How are those decisions made? What meaning do unpaid responsibilities offer to an older woman's identity? For example, is it viewed as caring, giving, duty? Research Questions The purpose of this research is to define and explore work in its broadest conception - paid and unpaid - for older women, and to explore the relationship of work to a sense of personal meaning and fulfillment for working older women. More specifically, the following broad research questions will be addressed: 1. What are older women's shared and divergent perceptions and understandings of work? 2. What differences and similarities exist among older women regarding their experiences of unpaid responsibilities? For example, how voluntary are decisions to do unpaid work? Do older women engage in more, less or the same amount of unpaid 52 responsibilities with age? How central are unpaid responsibilities to older women's identity? 3. How do paid work and unpaid responsibilities affect each other? 4. How central is work and caring for others to older women's identity and sense of meaning? 53 CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY This chapter describes the evolution and refinement of the research, especially in the wake of early interviews. The research began with the question: "How do older women define and experience work?" I conceptualized work in the broadest sense, including paid as well as unpaid responsibilities. Research Design The previous chapter points to the need for research that offers a deeper understanding of the realities of women workers by focusing on older women and by including the meaning that they make of their own lived experiences. Studies are needed that focus on how older women view themselves as workers, how they experience their work, and the meaning they make of it in the context of the rest of their lives. The focus on meaning and lifelong patterns in an area with little research does not lend itself to the quantitative methodology and survey approach that has dominated gerontology research. It requires a more intensive, interview oriented methodology. 54 It has been shown (Sankar and Gubrium, 1994; Strauss and Corbin, 1990) that there are many valid reasons for doing qualitative research. One consideration is the nature of the research problem. For example, research that aims to illuminate the nature of people's experiences with a phenomenon lends itself to a more qualitative approach. This point is pertinent to this study's goal of generating a deeper understanding of the realities of women workers by focusing on older women and the meaning that they make of their own work lives. Qualitative methods are useful in generating insight and knowledge about phenomena about which little is known. This is also pertinent to this study's goal of discovering knowledge about the process by which older women take on unpaid responsibilities. Qualitative methodology is also useful in fleshing out or drawing a picture with details that are, at best, difficult to capture and convey with quantitative methods. For example, what is the meaning and how central are work and caring to older women's identities? This approach allows the researcher to develop a theory that emerges from the observations and interests of the study's participants. Rather than setting out with a theory to test or prove, "one begins with an area of study and what is relevant to that area is allowed to emerge" (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). The goal of this study was to develop 55 inductively an understanding of varied definitions and meanings that older women attribute to work. Ultimately, the main purpose of using this approach is to build knowledge and develop theory that is true to the study and sheds light upon the area of study. It has been pointed out that in order to do this, one must have research questions "that give flexibility and freedom to explore a phenomenon in depth" (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). Conducting a survey study that employs a written questionnaire with pre-set choices would at best influence and shape participants' responses according to the researcher's assumptions and priorities, and at worst, hinder or prevent the discovery and spontaneous sharing of meaning and experience. Also underlying this approach is the assumption "all of the concepts pertaining to a given phenomenon have not yet been identified, at least not in this population." (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). Because of the paucity of research on older women and work, it seems most relevant to discover relevant categories and the relationships among them. Because of the neglect of older women in both gerontological and feminist research, I believe that a study consisting of rich case material would enhance the current understanding of older women as workers, broaden the scope and knowledge of gerontological and feminist literature, and 56 draw attention to the common ground that research on older women creates between the two bodies of knowledge. In-depth interviews can help probe older women's conceptions of work, illuminate the meanings they give to their experiences and discover whether, how and why meanings shift over the course of time. The focus of this study is on the women, not on any number of areas that might divert from that focus. In my quest to incorporate a feminist perspective and analysis, I came to realize that there is no "one" feminist methodology. Feminist researchers (Harding, 1986; Reinharz, 1992) and other social scientists (Thomas, 1989; Smith, 1991) have demonstrated the importance of qualitative methodologies especially in exploring experience and meanings. Such methodology starts from the experience of the individual, with the observed being the observer. Moody has referred to it as "gerontology with a human face" (Thomas, 1989). Kaufman (1986) suggests that in addition to biological and social changes that occur with time being relevant for the analysis of identity and aging, "more important, it is the ways in which these events are interpreted by individuals in relation to the passage of time that have a greater potential for explaining the process of change and continuity in late life" (p. 18). In this spirit, the methodology is designed to get people to talk about what is 57 meaningful to them rather than follow a detailed questionnaire that would force people to structure their answers according to the researcher's priorities. As previously mentioned, 1 began this study with the broad goal of discovering how older women define work. Using a qualitative methodology approach, one of my goals was to remain alert to unexpected themes or patterns that might emerge in the data. Two such themes shaped my developing framework and were incorporated as questions into the interview guide. This incorporation is described in the section on data analysis. While the addition of two questions to the interview guide did not change the study's original broad research questions, it greatly enriched the findings. It has been pointed out (Strauss and Corbin, 1990) that it is not at all unusual for qualitative research to take on new conceptual directions in the course of collecting and analyzing data. In fact, it is through the analysis of the data, which begins with the first interview, that the "process of refining and specifying the question will begin" (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). 58 The Sample The data for this study were collected by using a purposive sample of 53 women from the Greater Los Angeles Area. Monette, Sullivan and DeJong (1990) define a purposive sample as "a nonprobability sampling technique used where investigators use their judgment and prior knowledge to choose people for the sample who would best serve the purposes of the study” (p.154). While there is no sampling frame from which to draw a random sample of women 55 and older who are working and looking for paid work, every effort was made to gather a sample that would include adequate representation of women of color, as well as diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. The informants were referred to me through four avenues: the job counselor of Culver City Adult School's Office Training Center; the Vice President of Long Term Care from AltaMed Health Services Corporation; the director of Alternative Living for the Aging, Inc., and other professionals in the community. A sample of 53 women was chosen because of the limitations of time and the modest scope of the study. The study's ethnic composition mirrors the percentages of the Census Bureau data on women 55 and older in Los Angeles County (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990): 59 TABLE 1 NUMBER OF WOMEN 55 TO 64 YEARS BY ETHNICITY IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY Number Percentage white 186,009 55% Hispanic 79,432 23% Black 38,741 11% Asian 36,865 10% TABLE 2 NUMBER OF WOMEN 65 YEARS AND OLDER BY ETHNICITY IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY Number Percentage White 345,286 67% Hispanic 79,731 15% Black 50,128 9% Asian 40,288 8% Using the same categories as the Census Bureau, the ethnic composition of the study's participants was as follows: White 29 55% Hispanic 11 20% Black 6 11% Asian 4 7% In contrast to the categories used by the Census Bureau, the participants' terminology reflected pride in their respective backgrounds. For example, while the 6 Black participants described their ethnicity as Black, the 4 women who would be categorized by the Census Bureau as Asian, 60 described themselves as Chinese American and Japanese American. The 11 women who would be categorized as Hispanic by the Census Bureau described themselves as Central American, Nicaraguan, Americans of Mexican descent and Mexican American. Almost 24% of the sample who would be categorized as White by the Census Bureau identified their ethnicity as Jewish, including five born in Austria, Germany, France and England, and eight born in the U.S. of immigrant parents. Two women born in Norway and Finland, respectively, identified their ethnicity as Norwegian and Finnish, although they, too, would be categorized as White by the Census Bureau. Finally, approximately 6% of the participants identified their ethnicity by other specific or multi-ethnic backgrounds e.g. Russian Molokon; Spanish and Italian; Indian and Irish. In defining older women workers, this study focuses on women aged 55 and older because of the lack of research on women beyond this age. In addition, recent projections suggest that most of the U.S. increase in labor force participation in the 1990's is expected to come from minorities and middle aged and older women. For example, 55-64 year old women are expected to increase their labor force participation by 9% by the year 2005 (Rayman, Allshouse, and Allen, 1993). It is understood that any generalization from this sample would be limited to this population and might not hold for others, such as younger women, or older men. As Glaser and Strauss (1967) point out: Saturation can never be attained by studying one incident in one group. What is gained by studying one group is at most the discovery of some basic categories and their properties. The 53 interviews were conducted from October thru December of 1993 in the city and surrounding towns of Los Angeles. Participants ranged in age from 55 to 84. Their median age was 64.5, with a respective mean and standard deviation of 67 and 6.8. One quarter were 55-60, almost half were 60-69, and about one quarter were 71 years and older. One of the women declined to disclose her age. She reported her lifelong commitment to this because of her observation that "as soon as people know how old you are they think 'Oh - you're an old woman. You can't do this. You can' t do that.' And I resent that." 62 Yearly Incomes were reported as follows: TABLE 3 INCOME PER YEAR Number Percentage 0 - $10,000 7 14% $10,000 - $20,000 13 25% $20,000 - $30,000 11 21% $30,000 - $40,000 10 19% $40,000 - $50,000 5 10% Over $50 O o o 6 11% * N = 52 100% * N=52 because one of the women declined to give her income. Regarding yearly income, it is important to note that those women with an income of less than $10,000 were divorced and without access to pensions or other financial assets. They were from varied ethnic backgrounds. Women reporting income between $30,000 and $50,000 were either married and reporting two incomes (60%), or lived alone and were reporting their salary and pension or investment of theirs or a former partner (33%), or were earning that income in their profession (6%). Women reporting incomes exceeding $50,000 were all married and reporting two sets of 63 salaries and/or pensions. Finally, this table fails to capture the economic fears voiced by the majority of women in the study, particularly the fear of becoming homeless. The sample is further described by information about the women's level of education. TABLE 4 EDUCATION Number Percentage Less than high school 2 04% High school diploma or GED 17 32% Some college or technical school 15 28% College degree (A.A. or B.A.) 14 27% Postgraduate degree (M.A.,Ph.D) 5 09% N = 53 100% While Table 4 represents an accurate report of the women's educational opportunities, it fails to capture the depth of the women's lived experiences. For example, it does not include information about why two of the women - one Jewish and one an American of Mexican descent - did not complete high school - one because racist laws in Germany prohibited her from continuing high school, the other because she was pressured to quit by a gambling, womanizing 64 father who wanted her to run his business. It also does not reflect the perseverance and myriad sacrifices and problems that many of the women experienced in order to obtain their education, the later ages at which some returned to school, in addition to others who are currently working on college or advanced degrees. And Table 2 does not reflect various certifications or trade school programs pursued. Regarding partner status, 37% of the women were married, 1% were living with a partner as if married, 33% were divorced, 3% were separated, 15% were widowed and 7% were single. Of the currently married women, 5% were previously widowed, 15% had one previous marriage, 5% had two previous marriages and divorces, and 5% had three previous marriages and divorces. Tables 5 and 6 respectively describe the sample's ethnicity by marital status and age by marital status. 65 TABLE 5 ETHNICITY BY MARITAL STATUS White Black Hispanic Asian Jewish Multi-ethnic Married 7% 67% 55% 50% 46% 34% Living w/ 6% Div 50% 33% 18% 39% 33% Separ 6% 9% Widow 25% 9% 25% 15% Single 6% 9% 25% 33% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% The majority of the White participants (75%) were either divorced (50%) or widowed (25%). In contrast, most of the Black women were married (67%) with the remaining 33% divorced. A slight majority of the Hispanic women (55%) and 50% of the Asian women were married. Of note here is that both of these ethnic groups had a significant minority of women who had never married (9% and 25% respectively) who had devoted many of their previous years to giving care in their families of origin in the form of raising siblings and taking care of ailing parents. In general, they tend to act as surrogate parents to people with whom they have contact. They fit the portrait of what Simic (1988) describes as the "sacrificial child." 66 TABLE 6 AGE BY MARITAL STATUS* Young-old Middle-old Old-old 55-65 66-75 76-84 Married 49% 32% Living w/ 3% Divorced 31% 37% 25% Separated 3% 5% Widow 4% 21% 75% Single 10% 5% 100% 100% 100% *N=52 because one of the women declined to disclose her age. Of the young-old, 49% were married, compared to the women in the oldest age group that had no married women. Members of the old-old group were either widowed (75%) or divorced (25%). Table 7 summarizes the current paid occupational status of the sample. 67 TABLE 7 PAID EMPLOYMENT STATUS Number Percentage Full-time 18 34% Part-time 21 40% Unemployed, seeking work 10 19% Retired_____________________4_______ 7% N= 53 100% Thirty-nine or 74% of the women were employed in paid jobs, 10 were unemployed and actively looking for paid work, and 4 described themselves as retired. Of the 39 employed women 18 held full-time jobs and 21 were in part-time jobs. In addition, 5 of the 21 women working in part-time jobs were actively looking for paid jobs that would be both full time and better suited to their skills. Tables 8 and 9 respectively describe the sample's employment status by age and employment status by ethnicity. 68 TABLE 8 PAID EMPLOYMENT STATUS BY AGE Young old Middle Old Old Old ___________ 55-65_______ 66-75________ 76-84 Full-time 47% 17% Part-time 17% 61% 75% Unemployed, seeking work 30% 17% Retired 6% 5% 25% 100% 100% 100% Almost half (47%) of the youngest group of women (55-65) were employed in full-time jobs, which represents almost three times as many who were engaged in part-time employment (17%). In contrast, none of the oldest women (76-84) were employed in full-time paid work, while 75% of them were in part-time jobs. The number of unemployed women seeking work declined from 30% (youngest group) to 17% (middle group). In addition, though not shown in Table 8, the number of women employed and seeking paid work did not decline from the youngest group (55-65) of women (10%) to the middle group (66-75) of women (11%). This table fails to capture the experiences of ageism and sexism reported by women seeking paid work at the time of this interview. 69 TABLE 9 PAID EMPLOYMENT STATUS BY ETHNICITY White Black Hispanic Asian Jewish Multi-ethnic Full-time 19% 50% 64% 25% 15% 67% Part-time 44% 17% 18% 50% 46% 33% Unemployed, 31% seeking work 17% 9% 39% Retired 6% 16% 9% 25% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% The current paid occupational categories of the women are summarized in the following table. 70 TABLE 10 PAID OCCUPATIONAL CATEGORIES * Numbers Percentage Managers & proprietors (e.g. own business) 2 4% Professional specialty (e.g. teacher, lawyer, 16 33% doctor, R.N., administrators teachers, human services worker) Clerical/support (e.g. secretary, receptionist, 17 35% clerical supervisor, computer operator, stock clerk) Technical (e.g. medical tech, respiration) 3 6% therapist, LPN) Accounting & bookkeeping 4 8% Sales (e.g. sales supervisor, buyer, 4 8% sales representative) Operator/fabricator (e.g. machine operator) 1 2% Service (e.g. protective service, child care, 2 4% hairdresser, travel agent) N = 49 100% *N=49 because 4 of the 53 women are retired from paid work. In addition, this table does not include previous paid work that women held for years and left after receiving educational degrees, training and credentials. Finally, except for one woman, every participant holds at least one ongoing, unpaid job in their community, such as helping 71 foreign born college students improve their ability to read and speak English, as well as ongoing unpaid responsibilities in their family, neighborhood and general social network. Data Collection I informed participants that the interviews were being conducted for doctoral dissertation research and that participation was entirely voluntary (see Appendix). I explained that I am a social worker interested in aging as well as gender issues and that I was interested in learning about their views and experiences concerning paid work and unpaid responsibilities. I explained that there was little research on older women and work, and little research that sought to get older women to talk about what was meaningful to them, rather than to have specific pre-worded, fixed choice questions answered. I further explained that I hoped that the findings would contribute to knowledge about older women and be used to help challenge the stereotype of older women being "used up” tired and frail. Indeed, this sample of 53 women ranging in age from 55 - 84, are a most vital hardworking group of people in both their paid jobs and unpaid responsibilities. In fact, most of the women were so 72 busy that appointments had to be scheduled, and in some instances, re-scheduled, quite carefully. I met with each woman on a one to one basis and conducted intensive, systematic, taped interviews that lasted from one to three hours, with most interviews lasting approximately two hours. Interviews were conducted at the agency site, at my office, or at the participant's home, depending upon the participant's preference. The interviews were informal in style and I aimed to create a feeling of emotional safety by showing interest, asking further questions, and in general, using interviewing skills. In short, the atmosphere was friendly and nonthreatening. Interview Guide While the interviews were informal in style, I constructed and followed an interview guide (see Appendix B) and asked each participant the same questions, most of the time in the same order. The guide provided structure for the information being sought, and the interview yielded an abundance of information. Questions were designed in a particular sequence. Because all questions, except those pertaining to income, were open ended, they were not pre- coded . As previously mentioned, the data gathered in this study are of a qualitative nature which examines a 73 particular group without initial hypotheses about the nature of the group. This kind of exploratory research may lead to the formulation of questions for further research or to the generation of theory (See Emerson, 1983; Kaufman, 1986; Lofland and Lofland, 1984; Strauss, 1987). In this framework, changes may occur. Therefore, while there was some degree of structure to ensure that participants responded to the same issues, I wanted to be sensitive to the participants' interpretations of their experiences, and alert to themes that they considered to be important. Data Analysis Analysis began before the completion of my interviews. Conceptualizing the data becomes the first step in analysis (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). In this context, conceptualizing refers to taking apart an observation, sentence or paragraph and giving it a name that represents a phenomenon. Units of analysis are common and divergent themes expressed by the participants as they interpret the experiences and conditions of their work lives (Luborsky, 1994). Themes are the "generalized statements by informants about beliefs, attitudes, values, or sentiments" (Luborsky, 1994). In order to conceptualize the data, I kept track of themes that were 74 emerging, noting patterns of regularity when they existed, as well as keeping track of the content of responses. For example, the topic of setting self-protective limits came from hearing such commonly repeated phrases and sentences as "being a good person," "I couldn't say no," "I couldn't turn someone down," "I have always been responsible," "My family always came first," and - "If there's a need, I would take care of it." I then examined the context of these remarks and noted that they appeared in the context of a story in which the participants were talking about feeling caught between duty and desire, personal pleasure and responsibility to others. These remarks also appeared when a participant was talking about feeling proud and/or burdened by being a caring person. The inductive nature of this study meant that themes arose from the women's own perceptions and descriptions rather than from a preconceived list of hypotheses or choices. I used their own descriptions and the themes they most freguently talked about to guide the analysis (Kaufman, 1994). In order to accomplish this task, I listened to each taped interview, while making a detailed outline of each one and tagging or identifying the information into themes and categories. I also identified and transcribed sections that were illustrative of these categories and themes. I then 75 compared these to the notes that I wrote up after each interview. Initially, I had a tape transcribed verbatim, but found that it failed to accurately capture the speaker's meaning and attitude toward what she was talking about. (Luborsky, 1994; Lofland and Lofland, 1984). Kaufman (1994) discusses the importance for the researcher of noting topics that are initiated by participants. She points out that while they may initially not be seen as directly related to the study, thinking about so-called unrelated comments "serves to keep the investigator grounded in the primacy of the data" (p.134). In fact, when several participants "bring up similar "irrelevant" topics...the interviewer has a clue that the topic is not unimportant" (p.134). After the first five interviews, I added question #4 to Section IV because of evidence i.e. voluntary observations, that women had struggled with the ability to set self- protective limits but had become more able and comfortable setting them over time. This theme kept emerging. Therefore, I added the question "Are you more self-protective now than ever before? Able to set better or more limits for yourself, say no or turn someone down for a favor that years ago you couldn't have done?" If the answer was yes, I then invited the participant to talk about or speculate why she 76 thought she had changed in that way. "Why do you think that is?" After the first ten interviews, it also became clear that although helping out people and doing good deeds for others is simply a given - part of the fabric of life for most of the participants, some of them did so more intensely than others, i.e. long after children were out of the home, or even if they had never had children of their own. Given the assumption that the world would be a better place if more people had and acted upon a communal sense of responsibility, I invited the participants to speculate about the source of this value by adding the question "Where does your value of doing good deeds or helping others come from? (Section IV, question #1) The next six chapters describe the events, incidents, and indicators that pointed to the major categories and patterns that emerged. 77 CHAPTER IV DEFINING WORK: THE WOMEN SPEAK Feminist literature has taken on the very difficult task of identifying and making problematic so called "givens” or beliefs about what it means to be female. One belief that has been identified and challenged is the assumption that "a woman's place is in the home.” For the most part, older women have been absent from this discussion. This chapter describes and discusses Section I of the interview guide, which is devoted to discerning participants' notions about work, and particularly whether or not they consider unpaid responsibilities to be work. To identify how the women themselves conceptualized work, I first asked them to describe a typical day. I then asked participants to identify their paid job related activities, household chores, child care, care activities for other relatives, friends, or neighbors, and volunteer work. To clarify what they considered to be work, I then 78 asked "Which of your activities do you think of as work?" and "Do you consider unpaid responsibilities to be work?" Most of the women struggled with the questions. Twenty- three percent of them unequivocally declared unpaid responsibilities to be work - they're physically hard, they have to be done, and some of them are a drudgery. Another eighteen percent of the women considered unpaid responsibilities to be work except for taking care of others. That included raising children, and helping friends, neighbors and other relatives. Twenty-six percent of the women reported ambivalent feelings about labeling unpaid responsibilities as work. This group defined certain unpaid responsibilities as work and others as not. When asked about the distinctions, they would not define a responsibility as work "if it's relaxing to me or gives me satisfaction." Finally, one-third of the participants unequivocally defined unpaid responsibilities as being something other than work. It is important to note that regarding conceptualizations of unpaid responsibilities, reactions within and between groups were mixed. In other words, divisions were not apparent either by color or age. The women in the study who defined unpaid responsibilities as work offered explanations or criteria by which they defined housework as work. They included time, energy, necessity and its ongoing pervasive nature. Another 79 criterion that was mentioned and discussed was the invisibility of ongoing mental activity in unpaid responsibilities - particular monitoring, anticipatory skills and thinking. The following excerpts illustrate this dimension. A 60 year old married Japanese American woman who works full-time as a secretary explained: Absolutely. It's a full-time job. I honestly think you put in more hours as a housewife/mother. You really have to schedule your time and priorities with all the different functions that the kids have to do. You really have to have a schedule. There's not only a lot of scheduling, but what goes along with that is coordination and anticipatory thinking and keeping track of things to monitor, what has to happen. So you're not just thinking in the present, but you're always having to think ahead as well. (02#15) A married 69 year old woman looking for full-time bookkeeping work born in Austria concurs: "It's strange, but you're right. It is work because you're busy all day, because I am busy mentally in a way with my aunt and uncle who are 89 and 94. There's always something else." (02#2) One 63 year old woman responded without hesitation: "It's time consuming, not fun, takes away from what I want. It's repetitive, you have to do it over and over and no one thanks you for it." (02#7) One theme that emerged was the perception of unpaid responsibilities as never ending. From this perspective part of the women's challenge was the experience of time as a 80 dizzying, ongoing race. This experience applied not only to the present, but also to the past, and especially for single parents. One 60 year old woman who currently seeks paid work and rents out rooms in her home to "make ends meet" illustrates this point: "The work of the house - vacuuming, dusting, laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, cooking - all is work. I would say that it's the hardest work on earth - housekeeping. Very tiring work, there's no sleep." Referring to previous years as a single parent, she states: I worked seven days a week, 18 hours a day, at least. It was like, let's say, about nine hours at the business and the rest, household work and kids. I got up at six or even before. I cooked the dinner before going to work, did the laundry before, and then around eight o'clock kids go to school and then I went to work and I came back about seven. It wasn't that bad (laughter). There are times you don't see the end of the tunnel. It's just work, work, work. (02#1) The narratives reached back in time as women pondered the meaning of unpaid responsibilities. For example, referring to earlier years, women who had been single parents initially could not recall how they managed (03#l), couldn't remember when they shopped for food or cooked, where the market was, when they cleaned, and expressed amazement, marvel, sadness and pride at how and that they had survived. 81 Some who had been single parents were not so fortunate. Women who didn't have any social support and weren't able to manage so well were left with deeply painful feelings of guilt and self-blame for having things outside their control. This experience is illustrated by one of the participants, an 84 year old working class woman, who had three children to raise and support by herself in a large American city during the Depression years. Her ex-husband was mentally ill and she had no help from relatives. In addition, she was unable to stand up to family pressure to take on the additional responsibility of moving in and taking care of her father. Material conditions of poverty governed her definition of work: "Even years ago I considered it work because I worked full-time, and since I have never been driving, it was difficult for me to get to the markets and carry home the groceries." However, in relation to child care, she said "I would hesitate defining taking care of the children as work because of the love I felt. It was overwhelming and wore me out, but I loved my children." However, the lack of child care resources, coupled with a lack of social support and the need to earn a living eventually resulted in her having to make the decision (that torments her to this day) to place her two younger children in foster care. (04#14) 82 Those women with early parent care responsibilities (04 #18) and large families (more than four children) to take care of(01 #4) described a woman's day as fragmented in order to carry many responsibilities (02#15). The women who did not define unpaid responsibilities as work often struggled as they articulated their own conceptions and views. Sometimes it was conceptualized as a process of life. This conceptualization is reflected in the following observation of a married 69 year old Black woman: No, not to me. Really, I love beautiful things. I love beautiful surroundings. I don't love to do the work as such. But, I was raised by a mother who did housework for a living, to raise my sister and I. And I know exactly how to keep a house and will do what I have to do to keep it, you know. So, it isn't really work as such - drudgery or anything. I love to see things sparkling. I think of it as just a process of everyday life, just to keep things flowing, just to keep things going. It does not bother me. (04#16) Several of these women described their idea of work as being something that takes place within a specific time frame - that is structured - and that involves money. A 71 year old divorced Jewish woman from a working class background elaborates as she defines unpaid responsibilities as an integral part of life, and work as something more delineated: Well, you know, I don't think of it as work. I think of it as giving part of myself. It's so funny. You know, when I think of the word work, it conjures up a precise time, a beginning 83 and an end, you know, like a nine to five, what have you. And so the other doesn't fall into that category. It's part of living, it's part of enduring, it's part of growing. Yeah. You know when someone says work, that's the picture that I see - a certain space has to be filled and a certain time has to elapse. (03#2) Others defined it as a duty and responsibility that gives satisfaction and pleasure once it is done: Sometimes I'll be working at something, doing something in the house when I'm expecting company and I'll feel tired, but I have a very good feeling about it because I enjoy seeing the people enjoying themselves, eating and drinking and relaxing. It gives me a very good feeling when someone comes to my home and enjoys being there. It's not really work, it's something I feel is necessary to do in a home. Once it's done, it gives me pleasure. (04#1) For others, as long as the element of choice was experienced, then household responsibilities, taking care of friends, neighbors, and doing community work were not defined as work: "I don't consider any of these activities work because I do it all on my own. I have a choice. I guess it is work, but I don't consider it work the way I've known work because I've worked all my life." (04#9) The word "work" itself created a struggle for some of the women. Their association and expectation of work was something exploitative, and non-pleasurable. In fact, several women who were still earning money initially described themselves as retired in response to question one "Tell me about the work you do now and have 84 done in the past?" For example, one woman is now getting paid as a psychic. She is doing something she loves that she had previously done for free for friends and family. After I probed, she revealed a belief that it wasn't something legitimate, as well as guilt for getting paid, and getting paid well to do something she enjoys so much (04#1). Another woman (02#19) also initially described herself as retired, though she is still supporting herself. My probing revealed that because she wasn't working as hard as when she compared herself to her previous schedule and pace, she genuinely considered herself retired. Another example of a negative association of work was given in this woman's account: Work for me is when I have to do an activity that rightfully should be done by someone else who's getting paid to do it, who's incompetent, and I end up having to do it. That's work. That's work and I do a lot of that. That's work that I don't get the satisfaction of the work for, because it's somebody else's job. I get an inner peace that it did get done, that it got done well, but it's not satisfaction. It's a different thing. (04#12) Finally, several women defined work as getting paid to do something, and therefore, they did not consider unpaid responsibilities to be work. "In my background and ethic, if you don't get paid for it, you ain't working." (04#19) 85 "It is work, but I do not consider it work as such. To me, work is getting dressed in the morning and going out and coming back with a paycheck." However, when asked how she would define unpaid responsibilities, the same woman responded "A pain in the ass" followed by her laughter (02#2) Although many of the women defined housework as work, others were ambivalent about the issue. For example, a number of women considered certain tasks work and others not. They made distinctions between cooking/feeding and other responsibilities e.g. cooking and feeding are not work, but marketing for food and washing dishes are; playing with children is not work, but changing cleaning diapers and washing their clothes are. Not the baby part. The other part I consider hard labor just because I had such a, pardon me, bastard of a husband. I mean, he really was. I just didn't realize it. I was so naive...I just did not know what he was like, obviously. You don't 'til you live with somebody, do you? (04#19) With regard to drawing distinctions in defining certain unpaid activities as work, and others not, one woman's account of an elderly aunt and uncle's attitudes reflected that of many of the other women in the study - that taking care of someone or doing something for someone is work if the recipient is unappreciative, inordinately demanding and/ or nasty. 86 I consider it work because not all of it is done willingly, shall we say. It's a sense of responsibility. They were very good to me, but a lot of it I consider...I consider it work in a way, because all I ever hear is 'If only we had children.' That it's never appreciated. It's not that they don't appreciate it when I'm doing it - he does. It's that this is always expected and it's everybody that they talk to - 'Well, we don't have anybody.' And...we are family. It's the attitude, despite the 'thank you's.' It's coming to them and I wish we had kids, then we wouldn't have to bother you. That always comes through. And if I'm thinking back of the first few years before I got married and moved here, it would be my youngest one and myself running around, looking for an apartment. It had to be on a specific street. It couldn't be on the ground floor, it had to be on the second floor - it had to be this, it had to be that. Whatever I did, there was a flaw. (02#2) Another woman similarly stated, " It would be work for me if I had to take care of someone I didn't like. When my mother was dying I had to take care of her. It was just what you do (taking care of bills, errands, doctor appointments, hospital stays). It was work for me because she was so unkind to me." (04#2) Another recurring theme that emerged was a shift over time in their view of housework as work. The women who reported this shift provided varied explanations for this change. Some attributed this to having less energy: I'm now finding, though, that I'm not as crazy about housework as I used to be - house cleaning, doing the laundry, the ironing and cooking. There are some days I wish I didn't have to do it. I have energy, but not the kind I had in my 20's, 30's, even 40's. (04#8) 87 "I do now, because there's so much to do in the house and I don't seem to have the energy to do it. There was a time up until three weeks ago where I was working three jobs." (04#2) Others attributed their shift over time in considering unpaid responsibilities to be work to developing a feminist consciousness: Yes - it was work. I don't think that I thought of it as work. In retrospect, it was. But at the time I just thought it was something a female had to do. My mentality then was that I was a slave. I'm 71 now and going back to when I was in my 20's. I was 24 when I got married which was kind of old for that time. I had to get married. I was a slave. I mean whatever my husband wanted and whatever he....And I did things that I can't imagine now, like washing his shirts by hand with a scrub board, because he didn't like the ... he could afford....I didn't realize it , but he could afford to have them go to the laundry. And when I say I didn't realize it, it's because I didn't know how much he was making. (04#9) "In the past, I thought of unpaid responsibilities as a woman's job. Now I think of this as work." (02#7) My questions opened up three sources that the informant thought accounted for this shift: having and talking with lots of girlfriends who were "psychological" i.e they openly discussed personal feelings of dissatisfaction with being responsible for all or most of the housework which they considered to be work; contact with mothers in her daughter's nursery school who were professionals - M.D.'s, 88 Ph.d's - to whom she listened a lot; going to college she "became a real feminist." Another theme that emerged among participants was a shift in the view of the importance of housework to self and identity over the life course. These participants saw their past selves as being very committed, sometimes fanatical. It was very important to their identity, but as they got older, certain major life events happened that gave them a different perspective on "what's really important" to them in their lives. As a result, they came to realize that, for example, their homes didn't have to look perfect when someone came over. Now that I'm older, I don't place quite as much importance to it as I did when I was younger. And plus the fact that it doesn't require as much because I don't have small children in the house normally as I did when I was younger. It's a combination of not having as much energy as, it not getting as untidy as it did before because there are no children, and also that I don't feel that it's quite as important as I used to when I was younger. (04#1) My probing revealed that getting a divorce was a turning point in having a different or expanded perspective about what is important. For her, becoming economically independent and being able to support herself and her three children became very important and contributed to lowering the importance of housework to her. 89 Another reason given to account for a lowered importance of housework over the course of time is reflected in this 61 year old Mexican American woman's account. She describes herself as more relaxed in attitude about accepting a lower standard of housework. Some of it she attributed to having fewer people to take care of, but she attributed a more significant connection/meaning to having felt very unhappy and frustrated with things she couldn't change e.g. an alcoholic husband and unhappy marriage. She observed that her feelings of frustration and lack of control got channeled into what she could control - the day to day work, the chores, the cooking, the cleaning, how things were organized. No longer with her husband, she describes herself now as "more at ease with herself, with more pleasure in life." I make my children laugh 'cause I said the lady who lived here died and left me in her place. I used to be so organized and the immaculate housekeeper. And meals always on the stove, the stove would always be cooking. I didn't want a dish in the sink when I came back from wherever we were going, and I didn't want a single stitch of clothing in the hamper when we got back. I wanted everything clean. If we were going on a Sunday outing, I had to have the uniforms of the children clean - I knew that they were ironed, pressed, everything, so when we came back, I would just give them their baths, put 'em to bed and that was it. I was just so stinking organized. I've come to learn now. I have a niece. She's 90 just in a cleaning frenzy all the time, like maybe 'This is the only thing I have control over, so I'm going to do this the best I can because I can control this myself. And what's going on around me, I can't control that, see? The madness that's going around - but this I can control - my kitchen, I can control the laundry. And I see her the same (as I was). She's not happy. She was kind of like pushed into this marriage by my sister because this is the ideal man according to her. She wasn't ready yet and my sister keeps pushing her -"When am I going to see you with the baby in your arms? (01#5) This woman's ongoing advice to her niece is "Do for yourself first." Finally, there was a particular subset of women for whom the questions about whether or not they considered unpaid responsibilities to be work did not fit their life experiences. They had experienced specific historical racist events that included extreme labor, material deprivation, and racist laws that had irreversible effects on their educational opportunities and career hopes and plans (04#12, #3#10; 02#15). These women had experienced extreme early deprivation and the potential for living a very circumscribed existence, which, in turn, shaped their views about the things they gained later on in life. Essentially, it was a gift and an opportunity to have their experiences with their children and live that as well. One 58 year old Black woman described it as an opportunity to "have another crack at it, a do over." Therefore, to see it as work seemed irrelevant. It was in such marked contrast to her life up until that point that was defined by the cottonfields - hard physical labor, no school because of the color of her skin and great poverty. Having children and a home to take care of in addition to her own paid work was, for her, being given life. I suppose the only thing that I really wouldn't have wanted to have done was pick cotton. But, even there, when Daddy would say 'You know, children, if we can get this bale out tonight, maybe tomorrow you can go to school. Well, we would pick like we were crazy....Sometimes we did get to go and sometimes we didn't. Sometimes he could keep his promises, sometimes he couldn't, you see? But we would come right back another day and do the same thing. So I guess even picking cotton I wanted to do that, because it meant that we could then do something, which most of the time didn't even pan out. There was always that hope. And hope never died. We did that kind of work. So, anything I do, anything I've ever done - workwise - since then, I never found it hard, even though it was impossible. You know, it's impossible to work on a job, say 12 hours a day, and run a house and to keep it clean, to cook two meals a day, to keep everybody's clothes washed, to keep everybody's homework done, to go to school and do my own homework, and then to stop and do my husband's homework and still be smiling. You see what I'm saying? And standing. And a lot of times I wasn't well, 'cause I was real thin and I wasn't well. You can't do that, unless, you just about have had to pick cotton. You see what I'm saying? (04#12) Similar observations were echoed by two of the women whose lives had been marked by the Holocaust in Germany. Both of them were forced to leave school because of being 92 Jewish, with one of them spending her teen years in a concentration camp, losing virtually all her relatives, while the other managed to escape Germany with her parents and flee to a physically and emotionally confined and deprived life in Shanghai. They both knew what it was like to have such small opportunity to move on, that when they did, they could appreciate what they had. It was a gift. They knew how bad it could be, and in the words that the previously mentioned 58 year old Black woman still uses with one of her sisters, "It beats picking cotton." Finally, the observation that unpaid responsibilities are women's work and that it is mostly invisible (Daniels, 1987) are best illustrated by a comment that one of the participants recalls her husband saying: "I recently realized that there's a genie in the house." To summarize, twenty-three per cent of the women unequivocally defined unpaid responsibilities as work, identifying criteria of time, energy, necessity and ongoing pervasive nature. Another 18% also considered unpaid responsibilities to be work except for taking care of others. Twenty-six per cent of the women reported ambivalent feelings about labeling unpaid responsibilities as work, defining tasks requiring physical labor such as cleaning toilets, washing windows, and scrubbing floors as work and others as not. Approximately one-third of the women 93 experienced unpaid responsibilities as a source of satisfaction and pleasure; and as a source of duty and obligation. Several themes emerged as participants discussed their conceptualizations of unpaid responsibilities, including the invisibility of ongoing mental activity in unpaid responsibilities; a shift in the view of housework as work over time because of less energy, because of having developed a feminist consciousness and because of the influence of friends; a decrease in the importance of housework with age; defining work solely as something one is paid to do; and the attitude of care recipients affecting the experience and meaning of unpaid responsibilities. 94 CHAPTER V THE PROCESS OF TAKING ON UNPAID RESPONSIBILITIES This chapter describes and discusses Section II of the interview guide which is devoted to discerning the process by which participants currently take on unpaid responsibilities, as well as the process by which they took on past responsibilities. It explores their reactions to this process and their thoughts regarding paid and unpaid work choices. To clarify the latter, they were asked "If you could start your life all over again, would you make any changes in the unpaid activities you do? What about paid work?" When asked how they chose their unpaid responsibilities from the past, most of the women experienced the process as automatic and assumed, something unquestioned as a result of early experiences/expectations/models: "It's not a question of choice. It's a question of being used to doing it." (04#1) "This was before I had any education and I don't even think I consciously thought about it. I just did it 95 because this is what women who were married and had babies did." (04#19) Most of the women identified gender differences in responsibilities that were parceled out to males and females in their families of origin. As a girl, I was expected to help shop. I was expected to help set the table, help with the dishes. My brothers were not. It was a double standard. I used to feel it was a little unfair as I was growing up. I objected to it strenuously. (04#1) "In those days they had chores for boys and chores for girls. My brothers did the outside work and my sisters and I did the ongoing day to day inside tasks." (04#15) So assumed and taken for granted were unpaid activities among the participants - activities that require and show care - that often they were invisible to the women themselves. That is, when asked about current or past examples, participants might not remember or recall any at the time of the question. Typically, they might happen to be revealed when discussing another answer or describing an anecdote. The way it was revealed was reminiscent of a P.S. at the bottom of a letter. There was a casual flavor of "Oh, by the way, or, I almost forgot." Clearly, they were not doing these things for glory or recognition. The tone was very matter of fact, as if to say 96 "of course I do these good things" e.g. (02#11) remembering working as precinct inspector for 10 years. With one exception, every woman in the study was engaged in many unpaid responsibilities that included providing financial and emotional help and support for children, raising grandchildren as their own children (04 #15; 04#17), visiting (04#19) and doing a broad range of ongoing, sometimes daily tasks for sick relatives, friends, and neighbors, and providing thousands of hours per week in community work (04#9; 04#5; 03#2) As one woman put it, "We make up for whatever is missing in anybody's life." (04#12) While because of their ages, the majority of women in this study are free from daily, ongoing child care responsibilities, their lives are characterized by the myriad unpaid responsibilities that have been willingly chosen. In some cases, they experience a need for balance: "Right now I'm spending too much time for other people and I don't have enough time for myself." (01#12) The process of undertaking unpaid responsibilities was sometimes shaped by cultural factors, as in the following comments by a 60 year old Japanese American woman: It was never spoken, but it's always an unspoken cultural thing, I would say. Because in the Japanese family and particularly if you're married to the oldest child and he happens to be the boy, there is that unwritten rule that the wife of the so-called oldest son would take on the responsibility of looking after his parents if and 97 when the time arose. I always accepted that. If I had to give my opinion, I would say it's a generational thing, mainly from the standpoint that I'm second generation. We incurred different types of things in growing up because of the War, etc. My kids don't feel that their being of an Asian background is of any hindrance or anything to them. (02#15) A 65 year old Japanese American woman recalls her deeply felt guilt and ambivalence as she describes the impact of taking on and eventually letting go of this ingrained cultural mandate. Her mother had a stroke when the informant was 25 years old. She moved in with her parents and brother and took care of all the household responsibilities, her mother, brother and father, in addition to working a full time job. She did this for 10 years. Caught between wanting to fulfill the cultural expectation of daughters going back and taking care of their families in the Japanese culture and wanting to have her own life, she describes with great restraint the painful process by which she extricated herself: I had a sort of an emotional upset, I guess you'd call it. And that was when it was discussed with my father, brother and sister, about wanting to move out. And to me at that time it was a very emotional time for me. Even before that time, I found out that I had high blood pressure and I guess just being there at home confined, I guess it just made it worse. So I finally had a sort of an emotional upset and we talked about it as a family. (04#18) 98 In response to the question "If you could start your life all over again, would you make any changes in the unpaid activities you do?" the theme of regrets and lost dreams emerged. Almost half the women indicated a close relationship between marital circumstances, being married, and employment opportunities. They talked about feeling left behind professionally, and of missing education and job opportunities because of family responsibilities (01#2; 02 #5; 03#3; 04#1). Many of those women directly and without hesitation stated that they wouldn't get married, that they married at too young an age, and that they wouldn't marry the man they married (01#7; 02#9). Others revealed this more intimate information gradually over the course of the interview. One 60 year old woman who had become a single parent when her children were toddlers replied without hesitation: I would negotiate before getting married - like a business deal. This is the way I see life. Do you agree with it? If not, we don't get married. It's a partnership, joint venture, and each one should help according to circumstances. If somebody works, okay, but each one helps the other, and one is not to be burdened all the time, either way. (02#1) In discussing when they got married, participants cited the lack of options available to them, especially to poor and working class young girls. Most women saw their options 99 as marriage, the military or prostitution (01#4; 02#4? 04#17; 03#2). A number of women talked about their ignorance about sex as a factor in getting pregnant and married too soon. Some did not know how babies were created and others knew nothing about birth control (01#1; 02#4; 04#4). Closely related was the regret voiced by some that they would have had fewer children (01#1). The impact of historical events was evident as participants discussed work options. For example, the feminist movement of the 1970's affected their retrospective perceptions and regrets. Participants talked about not having someone to guide them - to help them put together "a picture, roadmap, or idea", (03#3) so they could have gotten support and sanction for pursuing educational and vocational options. "We didn't have job counseling then. We didn't have lots of the things that you have today, and we didn't define ourselves as women as a separate category of people who had different needs. None of that was thought of. I think I didn't have...someone to guide me." (03#3) Other women experienced specific historical racist events that included extreme labor, material deprivation, and racist laws that had irreversible effects on their educational opportunities and career hopes and plans. For example, racist laws prohibited one of the Black participants from attending college in her home state. The 100 Holocaust and racist laws in Germany during World War II prevented Jewish participants who grew up in Western Europe from attending and finishing high school, and from pursuing educational goals. Japanese American participants who were interned in camps during World War II similarly talked about educational opportunities being affected as a result of taking care of older relatives whose lives were irreversibly altered by the experience. Many expressed regrets connected to education, guitting school, giving up a scholarship: I wouldn't have gotten married so young and I would have stayed in school and done all the things that I had to do as I got older. I married too young and started having children and I had a full scholarship to go to nursing school and I blew it and didn't go. (04#17) The importance of education to this group of women is suggested by the number of women who returned to school to get bachelor's, master's and in one case, a PhD, while they were working in paid jobs (02#17, 02#7; 04#19, 04#17; 01 #11); the number who are currently in school (04#18), or making plans to go; it was also reflected in their explicit commitment to earning money so their children could go to college. (01#10, 01#11; 04#3; 04#7; 04#10) In the vast majority of cases, their persistence to achieve an education and/or earn money so their children would have a college education was conducted in spite of low paying jobs, 101 criticism by others of neglecting their children and often, great physical and mental hardship. Many of the women verbalized pride in instilling the importance of earning a living and having meaningful careers to their daughters: The one thing that I did instill in both my daughters was the fact that they get an education and that they have a career so that they would not have to do something that was meaningless to make a living, and that they would have something that they really wanted to do and something that was productive and something that would earn them a decent living. And that I did. (04#1) Pursuing lost dreams either by picking up for the first time or with renewed commitment, longstanding threads of interest and activity revealed persistence and tenacity in spirit. This is illustrated by the women's pursuit of specific vocational passions in their older years including costume design (03#3); art (02#5); writing (04#19); anthropology (04#18); psychic (04#l); desk top publishing (04#16); healer (04#13); restaurant business (01#10); psychology (01#11); poetry (03#1); social work (01#9). To summarize, while caring activities represent an ongoing, continuous aspect of the participants' lives, caring activities in their later years represent deliberately made choices. This contrasts with the bulk of caring activities in their younger years being experienced as an inevitable, fixed course of behavior, i.e. Most of the 102 women reported that past unpaid responsibilities were automatically assumed. 103 CHAPTER VI INTERPLAY OF UNPAID RESPONSIBILITIES AND PAID WORK This chapter describes and discusses Section III of the interview guide which is devoted to discerning past and present experiences of inappropriate job expectations and their meanings to the 53 women interviewed; it also describes the interplay of paid and unpaid responsibilities i.e. how each impacts and spills over to the other. To open the issue of relationships between unpaid responsibilities and paid work, I asked the women "Have you ever been expected to do things at a paid job that you didn't think were part of your job? If so, what were they?" The majority (75%) of women reported having experienced inappropriate job expectations and experiences. The women's examples of inappropriate expectations and experiences fell into five categories. It is important to note that their experiences did not seem to differ by race, ethnicity, age or occupational setting, including the military. The first category was sexual harassment. As women recalled these experiences, they revealed an awareness of a 104 historical change in the framing of sexual harassment from a private issue to a public one with legal ramifications. For example, a 73 year old Jewish woman from a working class home recalls a summer job in a clothing factory when she was 16 years old: I learned all too soon that along with this, I had to endure men touching, making jokes about my breasts or my thighs, and I would never know who was going to sneak up behind me. Today the laws do not permit this behavior. But at that time, my innocence and inexperience made me feel it was something I had to endure in order to keep this job. (03#1) A 63 year old woman reports fragments of conversations she had with male bosses while working in an advertising agency: "You want to go to bed? No, thank you, I'm not interested. Are you a lesbian?" "Do you like to fuck? No. (and I would walk away)." "Then I wouldn't get the promotion...a model did who couldn't draw." (02#5) A 58 year old Black woman states: I always carried myself in such a way that they had to go out of their way to say something to me. I mean they had to really go out of their way and have a real intent, because basically it was like they'd say something and I would throw it off, and they'd go on about their business. So I had a lot of people who were friends of mine who were men, but who knew their place, and treated me with great kindness and were my friends. One day I was in my office and he (boss) came in and reached for my bust. Well, when he did that, I karate chopped him so hard I don't know that I didn't damage something. He moaned and groaned and hugged his hand. I tried to break his hand and I never said a word to him. He turned and 105 walked out. I never said a word to him. He was in such pain he had to leave. He couldn't say that I karate chopped him and I never said a word. And he never tried that again. I didn't get anything (promotion), but he never tried that again. (04#12) The women noted with some relief that being old and female relegated this experience to their past; however, they also voiced feelings of regret that the experience of sexual harassment was considered a personal problem in their younger years - something to "keep to yourself" and hide with feelings of shame, embarrassment and powerlessness. From their vantage point of being old and female, at least 45% of the participants report noticing a double standard of treatment of female employees by male employers, which they had not noticed when they were younger. A 69 year old woman observes: "If someone was younger and female and sexually seductive, they could have more sick time, they're not punished if they come in late, and they would get promotions." (01#9) Similarly, a 56 year old woman reports: "They'll cater to and are very lenient in their judgment of them. They're very kind regarding days off, not getting work done or done accurately. (02#16) In contrast, approximately six of the participants reported a down side to being young and female at work - "being used sexually and then fired, or stuck in a low level job." (0l#6) Of note is that one of the participants (04 #11), now 77 years old, 106 identified herself as someone who was sexually involved with a male boss when she was in her twenties. She, in fact, described herself as benefitting from lenient expectations described above and reported being aware of resentment from older female employees. The second recurring observation focused on being expected to take on responsibilities that were unrelated to their jobs. A 60 year old woman working as a ward secretary when she was 50 responds: Sure, all the time. Every time the xerox machine broke down, my boss would say 'the machine's broken.' (Laughter) You know, I didn't know anything about the machine, and he would get very irritable with me because I didn't know how to fix it. (02#13) A 62 year old woman recalls a time when she was working as a receptionist: "When I was working at the office, my boss felt that I should clean his desk - dust and polish it. I did it because I was afraid I'd be fired on the spot." (02#8) This contrasts with a similar situation reported, but that woman refused to dust and clean because she knew one of the firm's partners and felt secure that she would not be fired. Another woman who was an administrator reported being asked to drive the company van and make deliveries. One of the women's comments about her experiences with men in paid work settings reflected a generally expressed 107 sentiment: "Men just don't have the respect for you. They think that you're there for their...whatever their needs are, and I'm not talking about sexual needs - get a cup of coffee...." (02#6) The third category of inappropriate job expectations that women experienced consisted of expectations that reinforced gender differences, and differences of status and power. A 60 year old woman illustrates the point as she recounts her experience: Well, you know we wear these little heels, and they want us to go to other buildings and carry stuff and do, you know, and I thought 'This is ridiculous. Why don't they wear the heels? Maybe these guys with their comfortable shoes can take the walk.' But, you know, we always have to go. Had there not been a dress code, I would gladly have made the walk in my flats. It's all at our expense and to our discomfort to dress the way the guy wants you to dress. And the same thing with the parking lot. The secretaries all park real far away and we have to make the big long walk, and these guys, you know, park right outside the door. They have preferential parking. You know, all those little things just kind of rub you, and they make you kind of, well, they make me a little annoyed with them, you know, hostile is the only word I can think of. (02#13) The fourth recurring observation focused on being expected to lie. Sometimes I've been asked to prepare a report and fudge a little bit, and I thought that was unethical and I refused to do it. I know I was called stupid for not doing it because everyone does this sort of thing. (04#19) 108 Similarly, participants recalled being requested to lie to cover up for a boss. Women expressed anger and disappointment at the lack of ethical standards. In general, it offended their “strong sense of fair play and what is right and wrong." (02#18) The fifth category of inappropriate job expectations and experiences was the expectation of working extra time without pay. The most extreme example of this was recounted by a 60 year old Mexican American woman who was working as an R.N. until she recently quit because of what she describes: "We were expected to work two hours overtime for no extra money for three years. I eventually organized a formal protest and boycott of this....They constantly harassed me and made my life so miserable that I eventually quit." (01#8) The final category that emerged across ethnicities, age and income level was that of working "above and beyond the call of duty." This was best illustrated by participants being replaced by several people after leaving their jobs, or their job being divided into several jobs. An 84 year old woman who works part-time as a bookkeeper reports: I remember on Fridays, usually, my boss would have a staff meeting where all these workers came in and they would work on a Friday - I had put in a full week and I felt like I had worked a month, not only a week - 5 days - 109 but a full month. I worked so hard. And after this staff meeting they'd all come in to do their - whatever they had for me to do - late on a Friday afternoon - and then they'd leave, little by little, and then my boss would call me in to type up in dictation some of the notes he had from the meeting. And at that time I was furious. Furious, because I was simply completely exhausted, and I remember leaving on a Friday evening and waiting for the buses in the cold and all that. When I got home - many times - I'd have something to eat, lie down on the couch in the living room, and wouldn't open my eyes until Saturday morning. I wouldn't say anything because it seemed to me that that's the way the setup was. I was secretary to the director of the whole department. That's the job I left when I came to Los Angeles from Chicago, and I was in touch with some of the girls and they told me that four girls were doing the job that I had handled. (04#14) While this particular narrative draws upon previous work conditions, the participant made connections and drew conclusions about herself and who she is. She echoed the thoughts of others as she speculated about her "workhorse" behavior: "I don't know if it's me, my generation - if we were brought up to give: 'You can always do that extra for somebody else. It's okay - you can do.' But now, it's 'take care of number 1' get what you want." (04#14) That deep sense of responsibility, care and commitment was illustrated by incidents reported by over 90% of the participants who typically volunteered to help out and pick up the slack without any intention of it becoming part of their ongoing 110 job. However, it typically became part of their routine. A 56 year old woman states: You just do things to get everything done, whether it's to finish the day, to finish the week, to meet the end of the month deadlines - whatever is there, you do it. And then it becomes a part of your routine. (02#16) A 60 year old woman similarly recounts: I don't take the attitude 'Well - it's not part of my job.' I just know that when you see the overall picture of what has to be done in order for the office to move smoothly, then you just assume that, and I cannot go and say 'Hey, I'm not gonna do this because I'm not getting paid' because that's just not in my nature. (02#15) Finally, there was a subset of women who currently and had previously worked in residential care settings such as nursing homes who reported examples of a lack of expectations that upset them. "I would talk to people, spend a little time with them and they didn't like me doing that. I was reprimanded for doing that.” (04#16) As she and the other participants perceived it, management did not care very much about the social and emotional needs of the residents. Participants expressed deep upset about this lack of care in facilities that were "supposed to care for these people.” (04#16) Participants were then asked to describe how they found out about their bosses' expectations, as well as their feelings about them. The majority (98%) of the women Ill reporting inappropriate job expectations and experiences expressed resentment over them, while 2% reported that it was fine with them either because their boss was a nice person and it was an infrequent request, or they were appreciative of flexible time given for compelling family responsibilities. Of the women who reported feeling resentment and anger over inappropriate expectations or experiences, many did not protest out of fear of losing their job that they couldn't afford to lose (03,#1; 04#14; 04#15; 04#16; 02#4; 02#8? 02#13). "I was always angry and there was no way to express it. I didn't say anything because I was insecure about losing my job. I needed my job." Those women who did set limits were those who were more employable, self-employed, or had other possible means of support (partner or other family members). All of the women reporting sexual harassment who did not set a direct self-protective limit observed with regret that they "did not know that I could say to him 'Cut it out.' (04#9) Responsibilities for others shaped the kind of paid work and particular days and hours that participants sought in the past e.g. nursing with flexible hours; jobs with graveyard shifts. However, the assumption that they would seek to make accommodations was so automatic that it was often invisible to the women themselves. In fact, 112 participants often did not initially describe any effect or impact of unpaid responsibilities on paid work. When I commented on observations made earlier in the interview that their hours or choice of profession were influenced by their unpaid responsibilities, they said "Oh sure, that was why I chose those hours or that profession but they never interfered with my job." The latter was typically stated with pride in oneself for being able to competently manage multiple paid and unpaid work responsibilities. In fact, at least ten women reported that when they were working full time and raising children, they were so involved with their children's school and activities that other parents and even teachers did not realize they held full-time paid jobs. Widespread lack of child care facilities affected these women's ability to pursue a job they wanted, or get and keep a job (04#14; 01#8)). A key element was often whether or how much she could rely on friends and relatives (04#14; 03#l; Ol#l). The most extreme example of this was a participant who eventually had to put her children in foster care homes in order to hold down a paid job. Unexpected changes in household arrangements also limited women's participation in paid work - partner's illness or death (02#2); unplanned pregnancy (01#2); eviction (02#10); combination of unpaid care activities e.g children and parents (04#14). 113 Regarding the question "Have unpaid responsibilities ever interfered with paid activities?" those who reported interference recalled various penalties they incurred. These included being docked in pay, being harassed, being given a warning and being fired because of attending to a sick or dying relative, not pursuing promotions, and turning down promotions and jobs with greater time responsibilities (02#2; 02#10; 04#12; 04#19; 01#2? 01#7; 04#9? 04#4; 04#10). In general, past and present decisions to attend to ongoing or extraordinary needs of children, grandchildren and other relatives were fraught with multiple fears of losing necessary income, being fired, or incurring intrusive personal questions that revealed mistrust of the participant's needs or a belittling or minimizing of the importance of unpaid care. When asked the question "Have paid responsibilities ever interfered with unpaid activities?" all except five of the women replied with two responses. The first response was "No, because I didn't allow it to." Further probing revealed that women didn't dare allow themselves to consider or dwell upon the numerous times that they had to forego their unpaid caring responsibilities in order to live with feelings of frustration, anger and regret. The other response was "Many times." Then they would recount incidents of being fired for taking off time from paid work to be with a spouse or child 114 during surgery or hospitalization, or to be with a dying friend or relative. In addition to the above, several experiences and issues were reported by women that are specifically due to the intersection of age and gender. First, ageism was reported and described by the 17 women who were looking for paid work at the time of the interview. They described their experiences as parallel to their social experiences as women outside the world of paid work. In other words, some of them described ageist responses from potential employees that revolved around stereotypes of aging: questions like, how long will you be around? how is your health? warnings about the amount of work to be mastered and musings if that sounded like too much responsibility or too much to remember. A 60 year old woman reports: While we were talking, he was interested and asking me for information. We had good rapport. As soon as I mentioned that I had taken early retirement (at a previous job), at that point the interview was basically closed. The objectionable things came out - 'well, maybe it isn't cost-effective, or maybe this, or maybe that.' But up 'til that point we were laughing and kidding and, you know, it was a nice, loose, friendly conversation, and then it tightened up a little. (02#13) However, all except one of the participants who were currently looking for paid work or had been recently looking 115 for paid work, reported a particular reaction that revealed a perception they were both old and female. Corroborating the literature (Sontag, 1972? Bell, 1984) that describes women's social aging as beginning much earlier than men's, and of women being defined by their physical age and beauty, many women reported and described their social aging experiences spilling over into the paid work place. This was not so true for those working in human or social service professions. A 63 year old Jewish woman married to someone younger than herself recounts: I had no problem getting interviews, but because of all the rejections I was getting I had my face done last year. After I had my face done, I got a job offer, and it really wasn't that much of a difference. If that hadn't worked, I would have colored my hair, even though everyone tells me I look good and I think so, too. (02#7) This woman additionally shared her observations of being used to receiving a lot of male attention since she was a young girl, and since her mid forties, noticing how invisible she has become in public settings with respect to men. My informants reported an expectation on the part of employers at the symbolic level - being perceived and responded to as someone's mother, with either negative or positive attributes. Participants recalled comments and negative consequences from younger bosses who appeared to be 116 playing out unresolved personal issues with their own mothers. A 58 year old Central American woman recounts circumstances when she was in her 40's and holding a responsible mid-level data entry position with a large bank: Whenever I wanted to go up they never gave me an opportunity, because I never dated anybody over there, or I wasn't that young to go out with them. They brought in a new supervisor who gave me a hard time. He moved me from one desk to another and I was doing my work well according to my supervisor. All of a sudden he started changing forms every day. Every day at 3:00 he wanted my work. Every day it was something new. He gave me a hard time. One time when I went to ask him something, he responded with 'You're exactly like my mother!' (02#4) A 71 year old Jewish woman reports her experience while working as an administrator in a local sheriff's department: They kind of treated me like mama most of the time. I felt that in many ways. In many instances, in their doing things for me and, like caring for me like they would for their mother. If anything came up like with my car, there were a couple of guys who would come out, look at the car and tell me what to do. You know - where to take it, don't worry about it. If I'd been younger or their age, they were always on the make for the younger girls, whether they were married or not...I felt I could ask any of them to do anything for me and they would have been helpful. And they did go out of their way. (04#9) The story of older women and paid work is the story of being passed over. "When you get old, they think you're used up." Like commodities that age, and get thrown out or overlooked, many of the older women interviewed had experienced directly and often knew someone who had 117 experienced being ignored, looked through as if invisible, looked at as mothers and ultimately, rejected in the process of looking for paid work. A 58 year old Black woman seeking paid employment at the time of our interview talks about getting a recent job interview: They were very excited about me over the phone...Once I walked in and they saw me, I saw the change in somebody's expression. I literally saw it - a sense of disappointment, some expectation was not being met that had been met over the phone. (02#10) Finally, all but ten of the women, talked about their economic fears about growing older. A 62 year old White woman seeking office work states: What's difficult and frightening for women especially, is not knowing if they're going to get a job, how they're going to support themselves, or if they're going to find themselves out on the street like the rest of the homeless people. That really scares me because I don't think I can handle that. (02#8) To summarize, participants identified five categories of inappropriate paid job expectations and experiences, including sexual harassment; being responsible for tasks unrelated to their paid jobs; expectations that reinforced gender differences and power differentials; being expected to lie; being expected to work extra time without pay. Another finding was an inordinate sense of pride, care and responsibility that was brought to whatever paid work was 118 being performed. This was most obviously illustrated by the fact that participants were replaced by several people after leaving a job, or their job was divided into several jobs. Participants currently seeking paid employment reported ageist and sexist responses on the part of potential employers. They also reported a specific response based on the intersection of gender and age: being perceived and responded to as "mother." 119 CHAPTER VII CENTRALITY OF PAID WORK TO IDENTITY AND MEANING This chapter describes and discusses question two in Section IV of the interview guide - the importance and meaning of paid work to the study's participants. The 53 women in this study ranged in age from 55 to 84. As previously mentioned, eighteen were working full-time, twenty-one were working part-time, ten were unemployed and actively looking for paid work, five were employed and actively looking for other paid work, and four were retired from income earning jobs. The women provided a range of explanations about the meaning of paid work. To begin with, they placed a high value on economic independence and considered it important to their self-image: It gave me security - financial. It always gave me the feeling that I am independent, because I had the two kids and I felt you cannot dump that on a man - two kids - unless you want them to get tired of it. So I felt independent. If I wanted to buy something for them I did, and didn't ever feel bad about it because I felt I can contribute enough to afford that. It also brought me moral support and companionship from the people at work. (04#10) A second meaning women identified was that paid work reflected and grew out of their values and personal identity. It was an inextricable extension of their sense self. A 58 year old Black woman and high ranking administrator in the field of education, illustrates this perspective: In order to understand sharecropping, you have to either have lived sharecropping or slavery - either one of those will get it for you. Now that's where I come from. We were in the cottonfields of Alabama on somebody else's land and my father would say to us - we were all girls - if we can get this bale of cotton out today, we can not work tomorrow, which was Saturday. Now - we took pride in getting that bale of cotton out that day. We picked like we were doing something marvelous and no one paid us for that. No one made us, considered us successful for that. We did that because our father said let's do this today - 'well, maybe we won't have to work tomorrow' or 'somebody will get to go to town on the bale of hay,' or, 'I thank you,' 'I appreciate it.' And we were youngsters who were very bright, and we couldn't go to school until it rained. And when it rained it was too wet to chop cotton or pick cotton. That's when we got to go to school. With that notion, when I see people who are disadvantaged either by mental retardation, by behavior, by gang affiliation, by poverty, they become me. See what I'm saying? I see myself. And so it's not about saving the world, as such. It's about living my life through them. (04#12) This perspective was similarly expressed by women who were looking for jobs and having problems finding work in their areas of training and experience. Similar to research on 121 older women workers (Nussbaum, 1990), most of the women looking for paid employment had been laid off. They all expressed feelings of frustration in their inability to find work in their areas of expertise. A third meaning of paid work was solely economic. Many of the women were in paid jobs that strictly meant earning a living, something done out of necessity and not a big part of their identity: I always said that after work is when your life begins- whether it's music or theatre or socializing or visiting. That this was one part, but then the rest of it was more full blown, you know, where you could be all that you were. 'Cause at work you're something, but there's more of you that needs to be listened to and heard and fulfilled and experienced. (0 3 # 2) This perspective was strongly voiced by women who were seeking paid work and becoming discouraged in the process because of the lack of job interviews and offers. Women with the lowest incomes were forced to take low paying jobs as domestic workers, as caregivers to children, and as companions and drivers to elderly neighbors to earn money while they sought jobs in their areas of experience. The women looking for work articulated fears of dependence, poverty, and homelessness when discussing their fears of not finding jobs; however, these concerns were similarly expressed by most of the participants. 122 A fourth meaning described by the participants grew out of the theme of lost dreams and regrets. Women revealed that they would have liked to have prepared or had the opportunity to prepare for a career, but were pressured into marriage by cultural and family expectations and circumstances. Some of those women might have been happier single, or as career or professional women. Most of the women reporting this experience talked about other professions they would have liked to have pursued such as teaching and social work. They imagined that these professions would have felt more meaningful to them, and would have helped them feel and accomplish what some of their unpaid activities do for them. "You know, I was always attracted to social work and I think I probably should have gone into that field, because I enjoy working with people and helping people and doing something for people." (0l#3) All of the women who held this perspective reported having an inordinately strong sense of justice and fairness, and an identification "with the underdog." The source of these feelings was attributed to having witnessed or experienced economic deprivation, acts of racism, and feelings of humiliation because of race, ethnicity, and/or socioeconomic class. This was particularly reported by participants who described themselves as Americans of 123 Mexican descent. Similarly, it was reported by women from working class homes whose relatives were politically active in leftist or radical politics. A fifth meaning of paid work for some of the women was related to the fact that earning and having money made them feel good because they did not have to rely on a man anymore. A 69 year old Black woman who works as a spiritual counselor and beautician, and is beginning a desk top publishing business states: I love what money can do for me and I like to make my own money. I don't particularly like to ask my husband for every dime. And then, of course, I did not marry this man until I was 52 years old, and I've had to take care of myself all my life, so the money is important. (04#16) Part of the women's emphasis on financial independence came from their negative perceptions and experiences of male performance, behavior, and the concomitant risks and experiences to the financially dependent woman such as divorce and being left "high and dry" (01 #1). Closely related was the feeling and reality of being free from a spouse's control or from a potential controlling spouse. Apart from the feeling of independence it gives them, women reported three additional meanings of paid work. A sixth meaning reported was satisfaction from a broadened social spectrum. This meaning is illustrated by the comparison drawn by a 63 year old Mexican American woman who 124 likens her paid work setting to "being in a family....We share everything - personal stories, emotional support, even food!" (01#4) The women also expressed personal feelings of recognition and satisfaction. A 65 year old woman states: There is something inherent in the recognition of being paid for a job that still makes me - in spite of everything that I have learned and know better to the contrary - there's still a deep core in me that craves that recognition that comes from doing a good job. It's probably both an internal and external recognition because it's the reflection of what comes to you - the perception of the recognition that comes from doing a good job and doing it well, and the recognition is like a stroke. It's also the feeling that 'I know I've done a good job and I deserve this payment,' which is not to say that if I am doing something on a voluntary basis and it's also well done, that I don't get a lot of satisfaction from it. (04#19) Closely related to the previous explanation, a final meaning women gave to paid work related to feelings of status in the outside community. This perspective was especially articulated by the four participants who were retired. A retired 65 year old Japanese American woman reports: "It's (paid work) important in the sense that I had some status, I guess you could say, in the community, and now I don't, in a sense. People ask me what kind of work I do." (04#18) Many of the women in the study, though already actively engaged in personal and community care activities, reported 125 that if they did not have to work for money, they would engage in community work to care for others. For example, a 56 year old Black woman who has been raising a teenage grandchild (who she considers her child), works full-time as a respiratory care practitioner and performs a variety of ongoing unpaid tasks for friends, neighbors and relatives reports: "When I finish what I'm doing now, I will probably go back to school and maybe become a teacher's aide and donate my time to the public schools. Those are my plans." (04#17) To summarize, participants identified eight meanings of paid work, including self-image; reflection of personal values and identity; economic survival; lost dreams and regrets; independence from men; broadened social spectrum; personal feelings of recognition and satisfaction; status in the community. In addition, participants reported that if they didn't have to work for money, they would engage in additional community activities. 126 CHAPTER VIII CENTRALITY OF CARING TO IDENTITY AND MEANING This chapter describes and discusses question one in Section IV of the interview guide - the importance and meaning of unpaid responsibilities and doing good deeds for others. Using the concept of "role" to describe the notion of care minimizes and deflates the meanings conveyed by the participants in this study. Doing good deeds, helping and caring for others is a deeply felt, ongoing, integral part of their identity over the life course. The individual details of the reported sources of their compassion vary from person to person, but the notions of compassion, care and good deeds were an assumed and shared value and behavior among the 53 participants. The concept of care and compassion which may underlie caregivers' motivation has also been the focus of much discussion and often debate in feminist research. Do women have the "corner on the marketplace" of care and caring activities? Are women inherently caring, and more caring than men? If so, why? Or is this a stereotype? Does being responsible for activities that require care for others 127 foster a compassionate, caring stance toward others? Where does the commitment to care, to helping other people, to doing good deeds for others come from? That turned out to be one of the foci of this study. What we have here are a group of women who have given of themselves and continue to do things for people - transportation, meals, advice, emotional support, help in easing someone/s death. These women are not saints. Nor are they an exceptionally wealthy or educated group. Yet much of their energy and time has been and continues to be devoted to taking care of - giving care. When asked if this is something special, no one replied yes. On the contrary, most of the women saw their good deeds as part of life, a necessary part of being a human being, even an obligation. (01#3; 03#2; 02#10). Similar to Gilligan's (1982) argument that women's development is intricately tied to human relationships, the women in this study reflected a consistent commitment to attachments, nurturance and caring throughout the life course. A 79 year old Chinese American woman talks about the importance of being a kind, ethical person. She sees no difference between work and care, viewing herself as a vehicle for helping others. Her words speak for most of the participants: 128 Everything is work, I think. My idea of work is, you feel a certain encouragement - now this is not involving any activity - a certain encouragement or giving certain educational material or a little bit of encouraging word to a person, to guide him or her to get a career. So if I can further people with encouragement, I like to help someone in that way. (04#7) This point of view defines care and caring as a mature identity, the ultimate spiritual goal, and as a consistent link fostering survival between and among people over time: I don't identify myself as (her name). My soul is my own. I will be another name some other time, or I was another name before - way back sometime. Mature identity goes towards this - let there be merciful acts among mankind and help each other live peacefully. I've always liked that. I can contribute...There's no limit in kindness. One should go as much as you can afford out. It seems to me natural. It seems to me that I never have to force myself. It seems to be guided, rather than forcing oneself to do it, or bothering oneself - will it hurt me. This perspective suggests that generativity is experienced by women earlier in the life cycle and maintained as a significant source of meaning and continuity. Participants in the study typically saw other people's needs as giving them an opportunity for them to do good deeds and acts of loving kindness: "It gives me an opportunity to give service. If they say 'You're a living angel' but I am just a servant to mankind. I'm not stingy about it." 129 Compassion and a tangible manifestation of it was a constant theme, a thread that weaves through these women's lives, like breathing. It isn't labeled or consciously thought of with any hesitation. We would send both parents $25 a month by Western Union every month. And I didn't have a dress, I didn't have shoes. I had holes in my pants. I didn't have anything. As my husband said, we drove around in that one little car, drove around on may pop - you know, they may pop or they may not pop - tires. But we always sent money back home to our parents. Those are the kinds of things I wouldn't think about when you ask me that, and I'm thinking 'What do I do for free?' Those are the kinds of things. (04#12) Doing good deeds for others was such an automatic and pervasive element of the women's lives that it was often invisible to the women themselves. This point is well illustrated by the recollection of one Black woman when her now grown son was about 5 years old: Mommy, why don't we have one of those things outside of our door with your name on it? Like Dr. Smith has outside his door." She explained why doctors had those, out her son repeated "Well, why don't you?" This woman used to take her son to the studio where she worked and believed he knew what kind of work she did. She told him that newscasters don't have those kinds of signs. At that point her son said "Mo, I don't mean that work. I mean the work you do here. You must be some kind of doctor." When she asked what made him think so, he replied: "Because people are always coming to you for you to talk to. (04#2) Sometimes the sense of care is so deep that it approaches the realm of a burdensome duty and results in 130 feelings of resentment. A 69 year old participant stated it well: "I am annoyed at my own sense of responsibility I think, because I let it dominate everything else." (02#2) In addition to discussing the meaning and importance of caring to their identity, participants were invited to discuss what they considered to be the sources of their caring feelings and behavior. The women provided five explanations. Some attributed their caring to a significant relative, such as a parent, grandparent, aunt, who, in their early years, modeled caring behavior. Another source of caring identified by the informants was their responsibility for taking care of others e.g. their own children and/or siblings in their families of origin. They observed that along with a feeling of caring they developed particular skills and ways of looking at situations. A 56 year old Black woman illustrates the task and skill of remembering information, needs or concerns that is often hidden behind apparent unpaid concrete deeds: I go to the market and I buy things for them (elderly neighbors). A year ago, she asked me if I saw something in the market would I get it for her. So today was the first day I saw it and I picked it up and got it for her. (04#17) A 60 year old Japanese American woman concurs: There's not only a lot of scheduling, but what goes along with that is coordination and anticipatory thinking and keeping track of 131 things, to monitor what has to happen. So you're not just thinking in the present, but you're always having to think ahead as well. (02#15) A third explanation provided by women as to the source of their caring feelings and behavior was that it was something they were born with, an inherent part of their personality. (04#16) A fourth explanation that women identified as a source of their caring was their having experienced and/or witnessed acts of racism and humiliation in their younger years. This perspective was voiced mostly by Mexican American and Jewish women from working class homes. Caring for these women was akin to compassion that developed out of a keen belief and expectation of justice and fair treatment. A 69 year old Mexican American woman who described herself as "born working" recalled multiple early deaths, poverty and ongoing paid and unpaid responsibilities in her early years. When her family moved to California she recalls being "beaten up for talking and looking different." "I'll do anything I can to help people who are in need...I'm obsessed with justice." (0l#3) Finally, some attributed their caring behavior to inherent gender differences. A subset of women talked about males and females in very different terms. In general they perceived men as inferior beings compared to women. Words 132 and phrases like resilience, flexibility, better than and stronger were used to describe females, compared to males who were perceived as morally weaker, untrustworthy and less able to carry multiple responsibilities. Women were described as having more endurance, an ability to "put up with more" and being more caring, loving, and of a higher quality as people. A 63 year old Mexican American woman observes: "If men had babies, there'd be only one." (01#4) This observation came up in the context of talking about the process of taking on unpaid responsibilities, as well as in the context of simultaneously handling paid and unpaid responsibilities. These women had directly experienced sexual abuse and emotional and physical exploitation. Some had witnessed their husbands and fathers having affairs, and had lived with men who, subsequent to abandoning and physically threatening their families, were diagnosed as mentally ill. While many of the women who expressed this view were of Mexican and Central American descent, there were at least four others from varied ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. (01#1; 01#3; 01#4; 04#14; 03#1; 03#3; 02#9) To summarize, doing good deeds for others is an automatic and pervasive element that is often invisible to the participants. The women valued and described caring behavior throughout their lives. They identified five 133 sources responsible for their caring feelings and behavior: observing caring behavior on the part of significant others in their early years; responsibility for taking care of others; inherent part of their personality; witnessing and experiencing acts of racism and humiliation; inherent gender differences. 134 CHAPTER IX SETTING SELF-PROTECTIVE LIMITS OVER THE LIFE COURSE If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am for myself alone, what am I? If not now, when? - Hillel, Ethics of the Fathers In certain ways, this chapter represents the intersection of gender, age, race and work experiences - a lifelong commitment to and pride in care, which are strong past and present sources of meaning and identity. Most of the women in the study observed that they had become more self-protective over time. That is, they are better able to set limits for themselves and say no if somebody asks them to do something that they really don't want to do. In contrast, had the same request been asked 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60 years ago, they would probably not have said no, even if they wanted to do so. In short, the majority of women interviewed found this to be a relevant issue, with some reporting that they still actively struggle with the issue. A small number (four) of women interviewed found this issue to be irrelevant to them. That is, when they need or want to turn someone down, they do. The observation that older women become more assertive with age (Gutmann, 1987) due to decreased home e.g. 135 childrearing responsibilities, fails to describe or capture the lived life course experiences described by the older women in this study. For them, the significant shift over time is one of becoming more discriminating as to whom and where to put their nurturing efforts, compassion, and care. Far from diminishing their unpaid responsibilities, the vast majority of women in the study have begun to include themselves as someone who deserves to be taken care of; thus, the found ability to say no when they truly do not want to do something. As one woman expressed it, "There are still many responsibilities, but I can choose the pace and who I do things for." (03#2) Another woman stated "It took me this long to get enough sense. You just have to help yourself. You give away pieces of yourself here, there and everywhere. You pretend to be extravagant, and then all of a sudden you realize "Hey - wake up!" (04#2) The women provided varied explanations for their increased ability to be self-protective. To begin with, women reported that the experience of therapy enabled them to become more self-protective. An 84 year old Jewish American woman whose only income is Social Security discusses her awareness of a connection between feeling depressed and being taken advantage of. Yes. I do only what I know I want to do. And 136 I can say 'no.' I know my strengths now and my limits. I think I understand myself better today than I ever did. I know exactly what brings on my ups and downs. I have from time to time needed therapy and through therapy I've learned who I am, and I do things that please me. (04#14) A 59 year old woman concurs: I think I used to say "yes” all the time, I think partly because I always wanted the people to like me and then, as a result, I found I had too many things to do and I couldn't. Emotionally - the burden of that is more than I can bear and I finally had to realize that. But I think one of the reasons that I can say 'no' now is not so much self- protective, as realizing that I'm okay - that I'm not as inferior as I used to think I was. I think I am more confidant to say 'no, I simply can't do this. (02#17) A divorced 62 year old Jewish American woman who works as a vocational counselor recounts her observations: I have enough self-esteem now of my own to realize that I'm the most important person - that I have to protect me. If I don't protect myself, no one else will. But you have to get to the place where you think enough of yourself that you're able to say no. What enabled me to reach that point was years of being on my own (as a single parent) and the experience of being able to accomplish goals I set for myself and to rise above tremendous odds. I was beaten down for so many years about my academic ability and then I had to really struggle when I was alone with the children financially, that I had to really start on my own self-esteem from the bottom and build it up, and it wasn't easy. (02#17) A second reason why women became self-protective was due to observing others say no. A 65 year old retired 137 Japanese American nurse who is currently working towards a degree in anthropology reports: Twenty, thirty years ago I would have a very difficult time saying 'no' to somebody who would ask me, but now, somehow, under some circumstances I think I would say 'no.' I guess being part of the world, you see other people - what they're doing - and you realize that you can do certain things, too, that I guess sometimes it's okay to say no. (04#18) The experience of becoming a single parent was a third reason why some of the women were more self-protective compared to when they were younger. That major event and change made them realize that they had only themselves to depend on. Without other sources of ongoing support they had to become more self-protective in order to survive. A fourth reason was attributed to a clearer sense of identity through education, specifically, returning to school. One 65 year old states: This is a big change, because at one time I could never say 'no' ever. But now I can say 'no' when I really feel it's inappropriate or when I really don't want to do something. But there are still some situations where I cannot say no, where I would like to say no. Ever since I went to school, I really have much more of a sense of my own identity than I used to have. That made a big difference in my life. It's like somebody else finally validated my worth where I couldn't see it or couldn't accept it or didn't consider it was....I realize that my feelings are worth something too, which wouldn't have even occurred to me before. (04#19) 138 A fifth reason women gave for becoming more self- protective over the life course was their involvement with Eastern religion and practice of meditation. One 69 year old woman attributes many positive transforming experiences to her Buddhist studies and regular practice of meditation: If you're at all self-analytical, and if you're introspective, if you look at your life and see what you might not have changed, and what you would have changed, you see that you often allow yourself to be victimized because you just don't understand what the process of living really is. And it's that, that I'm so grateful for, because now I wouldn't succumb to those things at all - being manipulated by people into what they wanted me to do. (03#3). A sixth reason women gave for becoming more self- protective over the life course was decreased family responsibilities. A 58 year old Black woman who is retired from the aerospace industry and actively seeking a new paid job states: In my old age I've become more feisty. Whereas I was very timid years ago and I might have done something and didn't feel I wanted to do this particular thing, I'd now flatly out and out say 'No - I ain't gonna do it.' I don't have the responsibilities that I had (raising 10 children as a single parent). I feel now that less is needed to get me through, so if it's not going to benefit me and I don't want to do it, no, I won't do it. (02#10) A 71 year old woman concurs: There's a feeling of freedom that age gives you. You're not concerned so much with what other people think. There's a feeling of 'I have a right.' I had a right before, but it would mean 139 maybe compromising with other people, with other rules, with other ideas, and now I don't need to compromise. It's now that I'm free, I'm unencumbered, I don't owe anybody anything. I can do whatever I want. I mean, I'm not talking about hurting anybody or doing anything, but just expressing myself. There's just a feeling of freedom that I think comes with age. It can only happen, I think, when you're responsible for yourself alone. So then your decisions wouldn't hurt anybody else. It's just a feeling of flying, really. It's a feeling of 'I don't have to be here. I don't have to cook if I don't want to. I don't have to shop if I don't want to. If I want to sit all day and finish this book, I can do it.' And isn't it a marvelous thing to have that time and to have that freedom and not to have responsibilities at that point. (03#2). A final reason women gave for becoming more self- protective over time was their sense of time being limited. "You do become aware that time is running out and your big priorities do change." (04#02) Some of the participants reported that they are struggling very hard with this issue. While they have become somewhat more self-protective, it is generally the result of being overwhelmed and absolutely not able to take on another responsibility without feeling "over the edge." A 74 year old woman who juggles two demanding secretarial jobs illustrates this dilemma: I found that the world isn't going to come to an end if I say 'no'. Nothing terrible is going to happen, and if people don't like it, I'm sorry. Now I'm feeling that's too bad. It hasn't been so long ago. I just think I'm finding out the conclusion that I can't do 140 everything, and you get older and you're tireder and you think 'Well, why am I doing all this?' So I think you finally, out of desperation, you learn to say 'no.' It's too bad you can't know it beforehand. (02#19) To summarize, all but four of the women reported becoming more self-protective over time, describing this as a lifelong issue, with which a small number of women still actively struggle. Participants provided seven explanations for their increased ability to be self-protective. Two of the shifts in behavior related to historical changes such as the mode of being in therapy and opportunities to return to school; another two pattern shifts related to such life course changes as decreased family responsibilities and a sense of less time ahead; other explanations included observing others say no; becoming a single parent; and the practice of Eastern religion and meditation. 141 CHAPTER X SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION The purpose of this research is twofold: (1) To advance our understanding about the meaning and conditions of work for older women? (2) to develop a model of inquiry informed by both feminist and gerontological perspectives. Specifically, this study has addressed the following broad research questions: 1. What are older women's shared and divergent perceptions and understandings of work? 2. What differences and similarities exist among older women regarding their experiences of unpaid responsibilities? For example, how voluntary are decisions to do unpaid work? Do older women engage in more, less or the same amount of unpaid responsibilities with age? How central to their identity are unpaid responsibilities? 3. How do paid work and unpaid responsibilities affect each other? 4. How central is work and caring for others to older women's identity and sense of meaning? 142 Overview of the Findings Regarding their conception of work, approximately one third of the women did not consider unpaid responsibilities to be work. The remaining two thirds unequivocally defined unpaid responsibilities as work (23%). Another 18% considered unpaid responsibilities to be work, except for taking care of others. 26% of the women reported more ambivalent feelings, defining some unpaid responsibilities as work and others as not. Divisions were not apparent either by ethnicity or age. Regarding the process of taking on unpaid responsibilities, the women reported a difference in how they came to undertake responsibilities in the past and in the present. With few exceptions, past responsibilities were experienced as an automatic process, something unquestioned and assumed to be their responsibility. Women reported the theme of lost dreams and regrets that were submerged by their choices of marriage and children. Other factors that conspired to submerge these dreams were a lack of choices, lack of external support and guidance, and poor self-esteem. In contrast, women reported experiencing a choice in taking on present unpaid responsibilities. Their involvement in ongoing unpaid responsibilities within their personal social networks and their communities did not diminish with age, and their unpaid caring activities provided a strong source 143 of meaning and significant part of their identity throughout the life course. Women strongly valued their paid work and identified eight meanings, including self-image; reflection of personal values and identity; economic survival; lost dreams; independence from men; broadened social spectrum; personal feelings of recognition and satisfaction; and status in the community. Regarding the interplay between paid and unpaid responsibilities, women identified numerous penalties incurred in their paid jobs as a result of their unpaid responsibilities, including not pursuing a particular job, requesting and avoiding specific work times, not pursuing promotions, being turned down for promotions, being docked in pay, harassed, and being fired. They also identified five categories of inappropriate paid job expectations and experiences, including sexual harassment; being responsible for tasks unrelated to their paid jobs; expectations that reinforced gender differences and power differentials; being expected to lie; and being expected to work extra time without pay. Significant findings from women seeking paid employment at the time of the interview included both ageist and sexist responses on the part of potential employers. Participants also reported a specific response from male co-workers and 144 bosses based on the intersection of age and gender - being responded to as someone's mother. Caring for others was found to be a deeply felt, ongoing, integral part of the identity of the participants over the life course. They viewed good deeds as part of life, a necessary part of being a human being, even an obligation. This was a value shared and demonstrated by the 53 women in the sample regardless of ethnicity, age or income. The importance of this value to their identity was illustrated in their varied, ongoing and deliberately chosen unpaid responsibilities. It was also reflected in an inordinate sense of pride and care that was brought to whatever paid was being performed. The women identified five sources responsible for their caring feelings and behavior: observing caring behavior on the part of significant others in their early years; responsibility for taking care of others; inherent part of their personality; witnessing and experiencing acts of racism and humiliation; inherent gender differences. Finally, all but four of the women observed that they had become more self-protective over time. This included being able to set limits for themselves and say no if somebody asks them to do something they do not want to do. In contrast, had the same reguest been made 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, or 60 years ago, they reported not being able to say no, 145 even if they had wanted to do so. They provided the following seven explanations for their increased ability to be self-protective: being in therapy; observing others say no; becoming a single parent; returning to school; the practice of Eastern religion and meditation; decreased family responsibilities; and sense of mortality. Consideration of the Findings Regarding definitions of work, the findings from this study are consistent with feminist research indicating that work cannot be conceptualized simply in terms of wage labor. The women in the study who defined unpaid responsibilities as work offered criteria or explanations by which they defined housework as work. They included time, energy, necessity and its ongoing pervasive nature. DeVault (1991) demonstrated that particular kinds of skilled work and caring attention produce family meals and family life. While some of the effort such as marketing and cooking is easily identified, she points out that much of the daily exertion is usually hidden. DeVault (1991) gives the examples of remembering family members' schedules and food preferences, planning meals that are acceptable and even pleasing to everyone, monitoring supplies and responding to individual wishes. She points out that when this work is done well, it does not seem to be work. 146 Similarly, women in this study talked about another dimension of unpaid responsibilities that was often invisible to others - the requirement of ongoing mental activity in the form of particular monitoring, anticipatory skills and thinking. This skill was identified in response to friends, relatives, neighbors and employers. Twenty-six percent of the women in this study voiced ambivalent feelings about defining unpaid activities as work. This group would not define a responsibility as work "if it's relaxing to me or gives me satisfaction." They defined only certain unpaid responsibilities as work. For example, some made distinctions between cooking/feeding and other unpaid responsibilities. Cooking and preparing food "makes me feel good and connected to my family" (01#4). "Taking care of the kids was a labor of love" (02#2). The responses of these women reflected contradictory insights about housework, with those who were ambivalent struggling to make distinctions between physical tasks and labor, on the one hand, and feelings of love and nurturance toward the people for whom they were doing those tasks. Another 18% considered unpaid responsibilities to be work except for taking care of others. That included raising children, and helping friends, neighbors and other relatives. The concept of caring has been the source of much feminist research. Some feminist researchers (for example, 147 Hartmann, 1981) have viewed women's responsibility for household work as evidence that they are oppressed, while others have celebrated women's commitment to caring activities, arguing that women have an innate ability to be connected, attached, loving and peaceful, that they have different ways of knowing, or different moral values (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, 1986; Gilligan, 1982; Griffin, 1978). Those emphasizing domination seem to imply that women who claim not to be oppressed are deluding themselves, while those embracing a cultural feminist perspective seem to imply that women who have priorities other than caring activities are sacrificing compassion and nurturing values to compete alongside men. The literature has now moved to encompassing this tension - both may be true (for example, Abel and Nelson, 1990). Similar to findings in other empirical studies of women and work (Hartmann, 1981; Hochschild, 1989) the women in this study, with two exceptions, carried the bulk of unpaid responsibilities while working in paid jobs in the past and present regardless of their partner status. Two women described themselves as having been oppressed in this regard. However, the feelings reported were generally not so simply or one dimensionally described. It appears that feelings of oppression manifested themselves in the form of lost dreams and regrets in relation to career and 148 educational opportunities. It also appears that women constructively channeled feelings of loss into wishes and goals to provide better educational and paid work opportunities for their daughters. Far from acting oppressed, women in the study demonstrated strength and persistence in their current pursuit of educational and work opportunities. Findings from this study support arguments that the life cycle frameworks of Erikson and Levinson do not fit the experience of women (see Rossi, 1980; Barnett and Baruch, 1978). The women valued and described caring behavior throughout their lives. This lifelong emphasis on caring suggests, for example, that generativity is experienced earlier in the life cycle and maintained as a significant source of meaning and identity. In speculating about the sources of their lifelong caring activities (from the past, that contained automatically assumed unpaid responsibilities, to the present, that contained as many and often more unpaid responsibilities than ever) women echoed similar perspectives to Ruddick (1982). Ruddick (1982) focuses on the different kinds of thinking that are generated by the experience of child rearing or mothering. She proposes that this maternal thinking can provide the basis for a new public ethic (see 149 also Tronto, 1987). Ruddick maintains that maternal thinking grows out of maternal practice, which requires responding to the circumstances of childrearing, which call for preservation of the life of the child, encouraging the child's growth and acceptability. She contends that the reality of a child forces mothers into an intense awareness of their environment. In other words, "good" mothering requires adapting to constantly changing circumstances. A response that works with one child at a particular moment might not work with him or her at a different moment, or with another child. Furthermore, Ruddick maintains that mothers expect change, and that "change requires a kind of learning in which what one learns cannot be applied exactly, often not even by analogy, to a new situation" (p.83). She contrasts this maternal attitude to that of scientific thought, which considers results to be real or credible only if they can be replicated (see also Keller, 1985). Similarly, the women in this study described their responsibilities for children as fostering specific kinds of anticipatory thinking, monitoring and remembering (keeping in mind). The women indicated that they also brought this specific kind of thinking to other unpaid responsibilities such as housework and community work, as well as paid work settings. Perhaps this is why women appear to be best and 150 naturally suited to jobs resembling unpaid caring activities, such as teaching, nursing, cooking, child care, and domestic labor. They identified their early responsibilities for taking care of children and others in their families of origin as one of the sources of their commitment to caring behavior. As mentioned above, while the women in this study, with two exceptions, did not talk about their caring behavior as oppressive, they did reveal, with four exceptions, a lifelong pattern of struggling with saying no and turning down requests from others. These women reported having developed an ability to set self-protective limits over the course of time, in other words, while they did not identify their caring as oppressive, per se, it appears that one negative or oppressive aspect of their caring feelings and behavior was the difficulty setting self-protective limits. Sometimes this struggle was the product of cultural factors, such as the 60 year old Japanese woman who, by being a dutiful daughter, eventually "felt the confinement more than anything else, wanting to do other things, be free of not having the family depend on me." While the ambivalent feelings in this example illustrate the impact of feeling torn in loyalty between two sets of cultural values - the Japanese value of group orientation over the individual and the American value of individualism, it also 151 reflects a broader struggle voiced by all but four women in the study - a struggle between duty and pleasure, a struggle between "doing the right thing" by fulfilling responsibilities to others or risk being considered selfish and irresponsible by fulfilling one's own wishes. While this study supports Gutmann's (1987) observation that women become more assertive in older age as they become free of previous childrearing responsibilities, they do not become more assertive at the expense of their nurturance, as Gutmann (1987) implies. On the contrary, the lives of the women in this study are characterized by myriad unpaid responsibilities. However, at this point in their lives, they have come to experience more choice about which ones they will pursue. Gutmann's theory of development (1985; 1987) maintains that women and men differ during middle and older adulthood as the result of "the parental imperative." Gutmann views androgyny as the "norm" for males and females before and after parenting, and asserts that clear divisions in sex roles arise in order to take care of the children. He suggests that when these roles are no longer needed, parents revert back to basic androgynous characters that include both feminine and masculine traits. Unlike Gutmann's (1987) conceptualization, the findings of this study reveal a more complex view of the women's 152 development of self-protective behavior over the life course. To begin with, the women provided varied explanations to account for their becoming more self- protective, indicating that becoming more self-protective was not simply or inevitably the result of being relieved of childrearing duties. Secondly, women in the study who did not have children to raise similarly struggled with the issue, and women who were currently raising grandchildren as their own children, reported being more self-protective. On the basis of this study's findings, it appears that gender is best conceptualized not as a trait or role, but as a part of self shaped during interaction, and as a social category used to place people in the social structure. For example, gender is used in families as a basis for allocating responsibilities. If being a woman were a uniting role, one could expect women's household duties to be consistently identical, and men's and women's household responsibilities to be consistently different. While this study cannot speak to the latter, women in this study who were married reported a range of family experiences that bear on this issue. On one extreme, women said their husbands did not participate in household responsibilities, and at another extreme, women reported overlapping responsibilities. In either case, women reported, with two exceptions, carrying the bulk of duties. However, as 153 reported above, women in this study reported differences including standards of cleanliness, the degree of importance of housework to begin with, and expectation shifts over the course of life. Kanter (1977) also recognized that gender is frequently used to place people in a social structure. Kanter argued that many of the behaviors associated with female workers such as self-effacement, praise addiction and emotionalism came from women's positions of low power and low opportunity in organizations. In other words, she suggests that women's timid behavior as paid workers is shaped by the nature of the jobs in which they work, rather than by their gender. Similarly, in this study, those women who reported inappropriate paid job expectations and experiences, except for sexual harassment, were in positions of low power and little opportunity for advancement. One growing body of research related to paid work and women examines the effects of family life upon work and of work upon family life (Eckenrode and Gore, 1990). However, this body of knowledge generally excludes older women - women 55 years and older. In addition, much of this research utilizes measures of such concepts as role strain and burden, largely relying on quantitative measures of concepts, and has not made use of the actual experiences and meanings as defined by women themselves. 154 Much of this literature (see, for example, Scharlach, Sobel, and Roberts, 1991) focuses on measures of caregiving strain, and the degree to which unpaid responsibilities, especially caregiving to demented older people, interfere with paid work. For the most part, paid work is viewed as the phenomenon being interfered with. Therefore, the research consists on the one hand, of such problems as absenteeism, tardiness, job interruption and exhaustion, or factors that impact caregiver strain. If one were to formulate research questions or develop theory beginning with older women's experiences, one might come to ask what is interfering with or preventing people from engaging in caring behavior, and what factors have led to a decline in such values. The framework might be consistent with this study's findings of older women as caregivers, reports of lifelong dilemmas and penalties sustained in the process of being torn between strong emotional commitments to unpaid responsibilities and strong moral and economic commitments to paid work (e.g. being docked in pay; being harassed; being fired; not pursuing promotions; turning down promotions and jobs with greater time responsibilities). This body of literature typically characterizes older people as recipients of care. The findings from this study differ from this mainstream social science portrait. The 155 women in this study have been and continue to provide unpaid care to family, friends and lovers through their younger, middle and older years. All except four were engaged in paid work or seeking employment, and the majority of participants voiced fears and concerns about securing and maintaining an adeguate income. These findings are more consistent with the sociological picture drawn by feminist writers (See, for example, Calasanti and Zajicek, 1993; Hess, 1990; Nett, 1982) and political and social advocacy groups such as the Older Women's League (1989; 1988). While there is an absence of research on the meaning of paid work to older women, some of the findings from this study are consistent with feminist research on women of color. For example, one of the meanings of paid work identified by women in this study was being independent of men. Earning and having money made them feel good. Part of the women's emphasis came from their negative perceptions and experiences of male performance, behavior, (e.g. having affairs; alcohol abuse; earning little or no money; withholding money) and the concomitant risks to the financially dependent woman. Closely related was the feeling and reality of being free from a spouse's control or from a potentially controlling spouse. This is similarly described by Glenn (1980) who demonstrates that although the issei women she interviewed 156 did end up working a double shift - one as paid domestic workers and one as unpaid workers at home in housework and family businesses - their paid work provided them with some resources (benefits) that they wanted and/or needed but didn't have when working for free in the family. For example, they could open up their own bank accounts and use money to buy things for themselves or their children without asking their husbands; they could hide their wages because of flexible work hours and informal pay arrangements; some used money to support themselves and/or others when there was no husband, or one who earned little or no wages, or one who squandered wages on alcohol. The paid jobs also took them out of the family, away from direct control of their husbands. Being both old and female affected some dimensions of work. Women in this study reported being perceived and related to as mothers, with either negative or positive attributes. Sokoloff (1980) argued that women in the paid work place are perceived as actual or potential mothers, referring to an employer's perception that sooner or later a female employee will become or want to become a mother and therefore should not be hired or given too much responsibility. However, while Sokoloff's (1980) argument was a literal one, the perception being reported in this study occurred on a symbolic level. The women described a 157 particular kind of dynamic that has been described as an ageist stereotype in social contexts (Siegel, 1990) and would be described as a displacement in psychoanalytic terms (Laughlin, 1967). Most of the women in this study looking for paid work described experiencing themselves as Sontag (1972) wrote. Though written over 20 years ago, it is as relevant today as when it was first published in the Saturday Review. Socially, women age more quickly than men do. They report experiencing job discrimination as early as their 40's. Findings in this study confirm that age discrimination in the job seeking process for older women is inextricably bound to the loss of perceived physical attractiveness, and therefore, usefulness. On the basis of these findings, it appears that the women's sense of self-image and sense of worth derived in great part from their lifelong pride in serving others. Their paid and unpaid responsibilities take place in the context of a deeply held value of social usefulness. Over the life course, most of the women reported a shift from being responsible for automatically assumed caring activities, to being responsible for caring activities that were experienced as being made more out of choice. As Kaufman (1986) points out, people continually make up their lives so as to be able to live with themselves, and 158 have a coherent picture/view of themselves that creates continuity and balance. It appears that for the women in this study, caring in older age expands its meaning to include concern for themselves. Kaufman's (1986) informants did not conceive of themselves in a context of aging; this was less true for the women in this study who were looking for paid work and facing ageist and sexist responses, as well as for those women who were juggling several part-time paid jobs and unpaid responsibilities, and remembered earlier times when they were less exhausted after a day of paid and unpaid work. Strengths and Limitations This study has several strengths. To begin with, social scientists have rarely conducted studies of older women and work, even though older women's presence in the paid work force doubled between 1950 and 1989. This study also expands upon the narrow conceptualization of care as concrete activity to include complexities of meaning, experience and values. The third strength is its examination of the meaning of work to older women. This study developed insights into inappropriate job expectations and experiences at work and in the job seeking process that relate specifically to the intersection of gender and age. Previous studies about older 159 workers focus on services needed for discouraged older workers, as well as gender differences in the adjustment to unemployment. Finally, qualitative methodology allowed the participants to generate insights about significant aspects of their life experiences, such as speculations about sources of their caring values and behavior, difficulties saying no to requests from others, and setting self- protective limits over the life course. However, this study also has limitations. To begin with, it is understood that any generalization from this sample would be limited to this population and might not hold for others, such as younger women, older men or other women. A second limitation relates to the sample size. Although the sample includes women of varied ethnic backgrounds in comparable proportions to the percentages of older women in Los Angeles County, the overall size of the sample (53) did not allow for large numbers of women from diverse ethnic backgrounds. A larger sample might enable one to draw a more complex picture of similarities, differences and concerns among and within ethnic groups. 160 Implications for Further Research The findings of this study lead to questions for further research. Would these findings be similar if interviews had been done with other populations, such as men, or other older women? What about younger women? One wonders about both gender and generational differences and similarities. For example, will future cohorts of women report similar issues of lost dreams and regrets as the result of an external lack of support, guidance? Regarding the issue of setting self-protective limits over the life course, will future cohorts of women struggle with this issue? To what extent will future cohorts of women make choices out of desire, not default? If women begin to make choices out of desire, considering their own needs as legitimate before reaching older ages, will this affect the level of caring activities and result in a values shift away from communal responsibility? Will unpaid responsibilities be perceived as an insignificant value? Regarding gender differences and similarities, qualitative research that is conducted with older women and men can shed light on the shaping of gender in the life course. In general, one might say that this sample of older women believes in the giving of service to others. How might this compare to the same study conducted with older men? 161 Would their lives reflect a strong commitment to caring acts? Would they evidence struggle between duty and desire? If so, would it manifest itself in the form of struggling with setting self-protective limits over the life course? How much is giving above and beyond the call of duty, a generational or gender issue, or a combination? While there is considerable knowledge about infant development, there is a need for longitudinal research with older persons. Although the point was made over twenty years ago that "not all types of experience are found to be present in every individual" (Frankl-Brunswik, 1968), it is still relevant. Longitudinal research with older people is more complex because they have experienced almost a total life cycle over periods of time that have also contained changes. Benitez (1974) suggests the importance of "following the same persons through a number of life cycle stages, as Erikson did with those children he studied for Childhood and Society. She points out that "while continuity has been used as an organizing principle in development throughout the life cycle, by comparison it is given short shrift in aging." (p.211) This may offer an opportunity for theory that discovers, explores and incorporates issues that are salient to older women, such as becoming more self-protective over the life course and the dilemmas of valuing care. 162 CHAPTER XI CONCLUSIONS This chapter discusses implications of the findings in the context of theory building, education and service planning. In an effort to create more economic and social options for women, it has been argued that unpaid responsibilities are work (Sharp and Broomhill, 1988), and that being responsible for doing unpaid work is something unequal and socially and economically oppressive - women are not inherently more gifted at doing it, women do more of it in heterosexual relationships regardless of outside employment, it shapes and justifies the categories of paid work women are offered, it is ongoing and tedious, it limits paid work opportunities - in short, being responsible for unpaid work is exploitative. As more voices have entered this feminist debate, questions and understandings have become more complex. For example, as women of color entered the arena of feminist debate, their perspectives expanded the boundaries and understanding of "women's work." They identified the blur between paid and unpaid responsibilities, the sense of pride 163 and appreciation derived from having the social and economic luxury of a home of one's own to take care of, and even the commonality between women of color getting paid to clean house and take care of people and the unemployed white female who has to continue doing whatever is left after women of color are paid and go home (see, for example, Glenn, 1980; Jones, 1982). The dynamics of race challenged and added to feminist conceptions that initially were from the perspectives of white, middle class women. When the truth or validity of a deeply felt and assumed social fact is guestioned, it behooves the challengers to be unified to minimize the risk of being ignored. If the goal of the questioning is social and political change, it requires compelling argument and evidence. Indeed, the process of and arguments used to question and re-examine the social fact of women being naturally suited to take care of hearth, home and people have been used to support social and political changes; for example, legislation to assign economic value and count unwaged responsibilities in the GNP; Family Leave Act; job discrimination legislation. Using housework as an example, one sees the interdependence between private and public spheres. That is, housework is real work, contributing to areas outside the household and cutting the reproduction costs of waged workers. To quote Rayna Rapp (p.172, 1982), "Imagine if all 164 those meals had to be bought at restaurants, those clothes cleaned at laundry rates, those beds made by hotel employees!" Changing boundaries of the state are closely related to women's free, invisible housework. For example, meals on wheels, disaster appeals, food co-ops, peace groups and other kinds of social services to neighbors have generally been the unpaid work of women. Survival of individuals and communities often depend on this free work, though G.N.P.'s and history rarely record these achievements. Glazer (1984) points out that when there is a cutback in services by the state, such as shorter hospital stays, more invisible work is pushed onto women. And as long as women are doing labor for free, there is no need for the state to pay for it. Welfare acknowledges women's work, pays for it, and accepts responsibility for its continuation. By the same token, cutbacks in social services or the elimination of programs hide the fact that it is real work and generally allocated to women. One question that emerges is whether or not housework is oppressive if the women doing it do not define or recognize it as such. This raises the importance of conceptualizing why someone who is oppressed does not feel oppressed. In other words, it isn't helpful to see ideology only as something that is being imposed on someone else. 165 Echoing the question raised by Sacks' ward secretaries (Sacks and Remy, 1984), unless someone is stupid, why would she or he consistently submit to an ideology that hurts them? Therefore, it is important to understand why women who "buy into" this ideology do so; for example, it may give them a sense of control, access to money, or an area of competence and pride. It is likewise important to understand the options and context of housework for women who accept this ideology. What is their ethnic and class background, their exposure to political thought and analysis? What does it mean to them? The Marxist view of work as intrinsically alienating i.e. burdensome and devoid of value, loses sight of human, living bodily experience. It loses sight of an ethic of care, the value of care and pride taken in work. I would argue that it is important, if not critical, to rediscover the passion that is applied to all tasks across the board whether paid or unpaid. Care is an inextricable part of life for this generation of women, whereas the so called baby boom generation has been raised with the notion of care as an option. As one of the participants observed: "I'm a very good and wonderful person and I don't know if that counts in these times, but I have a lot of pride because I'm that." 166 There is a contradiction between what individuals may experience in daily life (that is very real and valid) and the legitimate understanding that much of what they engage in is due to and reinforces patriarchal hegemony. The willingness to do housework and care for children, other relatives, friends, neighbors and community supports a patriarchal hegemony. Rather than take a strident principled stance in one perspective or the other, as has been done in debates about the ethic of care vs. exploitation, I would argue that it is important to accept the contradiction between the political sense and the living sense. It is a poignant contradiction when people/women make a commitment to a setting or set of circumstances that are exploitative. Research questions and writings that try to "nail down” essential natures of females and males (e.g Is caring for others a fundamental or essential characteristic of females? Are males inherently dominant? How inherently different or similar are boys and girls?) seem to emphasize either differences (Gilligan, 1982; Bly, 1990) or similarities (Maccoby and Jacklin, 1974). Asking such questions as how, when and why more females than males do more caring work is important. Presumably if one knows, social arrangements can be re-worked so as to reproduce more of it in males and perhaps more of a balance in those women who struggle between caring for others and caring for 167 themselves (similar to the majority of women in this study who have become more self-protective over time). However, I would argue that posing essentialist questions may draw precious attention and resources from questions that have a more practical bent. This study supports the need to get society to define and view work and nonwork less narrowly, so that, for example, doing and giving service is given more significance. It points to the need for a model of politics that affirms the protection of fragile and vulnerable human existence, as well as the importance of finding a way to incorporate it into the public domain. One step in that direction is to address the social and economic needs of older women. For example, findings from this study point to several specific direct service and social policy needs of older women, some of which have been enumerated elsewhere (see, for example, Rayman and Allshouse, 1990; Older Women's League, 1989; Kahne, 1991). Regarding the job seeking process, this study indicates a need for support services such as a group that provides mutual support, coping strategies, and a feeling of empowerment in the face of sexist and ageist obstacles. Another need indicated is for job training and retraining programs. Possible solutions might include building flexible time for caring activities 168 into all paid jobs; re-tooling mid-life women as V.A. programs do for men who have been in the service; changing the division of labor within households; developing consciousness-raising groups for women to discuss their attitudes and concerns about housework and caring activities, and encouraging legislative bodies to assign economic value to unpaid work. Finally, this study indicates a need for younger and older women to unite around issues of caregiving and paid employment in low status and low paying jobs. Caregiving has the potential of helping women transcend chronological age as a social barrier in order to identify common needs such as socially supported care for children and adults, pension availability and adequacy. Women's lifelong, unpaid, disvalued, but expected work as caregivers, along with low paying, low status jobs result in economic insecurity in old age (Morgan, 1991). Way before people lived, dinosaurs walked, roamed and ruled the planet. They became extinct. It is not known exactly why. People have lived on the planet for just a fraction of the time that dinosaurs did. Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction writer, predicted that sometime in the future the planet would become uninhabitable, people would become extinct and the planet would be inhabited and ruled by machines. Machines could be the next species. Why not? If 169 people cease to care for each other and our hone - the planet - it is very possible that our species will not survive. It seems to me that caring work - deeds and responsibilities - and compassion must be given its due credit and importance as a necessary and possibly sufficient factor for survival of the human species. 170 APPENDIX A. Cover Letters B. Interview Guide AltaMed 171 Dear I an sending you this letter to let you know about a research project in which you might like to participate. It will explore the meaning of work, including paid jobs and unpaid responsibilities, among women who are 55 and older. This study is supported by the University of Southern California (USC) and is being conducted by Joanne Altschuler, a Doctoral Student at the USC School of Social Work. Our agency is pleased to recommend this project which will help us understand more about the experiences, needs and problems that older women face. Since there has been so little research done in this area, your experiences and views about work would make an important contribution to this study. If you are interested in participating, please let me know, and I will give Joanne Altschuler your name and phone number to arrange a one hour interview at your convenience. The information you share will be entirely confidential. Names will never be used in the findings reported from this study, and information will be analyzed for overall and group patterns, and not for individual responses. If you have any questions or want more information about this study, please call Joanne Altschuler at (310) 827-2500. Very truly yours, Marie Torres Vice President Long Term Care C o n tin u in g T he T ra d itio n O f Caring. A lta M e d H e a lth S e r v i c e s C o r p o r a tio n C O R P O R A TE O FFIC ES PLEASE NOTE Page(s) not included with original material and unavailable from author or university. Rimed as received. UMI 173 INTERVIEW GUIDE Section I. DEFINING WORK 1. Tell me about the work you do now and have done in the past. 2. Could you describe to me a typical day? 3. Which of your activities do you think of as work? Probe: What about housework, taking care of relatives, friends or neighbors? 4. Do you consider unpaid responsibilities to be work? If yes, which ones and why? If no, why not? Section II. PROCESS OF TAKING ON UNPAID RESPONSIBILITIES 1. How did you choose the unpaid responsibilities you now spend your time doing? What about in the past? 2. How much free choice did you experience? Were you asked or pressured? If so, by whom? Feelings about it? Help from anyone? If so, from whom? 3. Has the amount of unpaid responsibilities increased, decreased, or stayed the same over the course of time? 4. If you could start your life all over again, would you make any changes in the unpaid activities you do? What about paid work? 174 Section III. INTERPLAY OF UNPAID RESPONSIBILITIES AND PAID WORK 1. Have you ever been expected to do things at a paid job that you didn't think were part of your job? If so, what were they? Who expected you to do them? If a participant asked for an example, I mentioned the following: Prepare or serve food or drinks; Smile when you don't feel like it; Do personal favors; Give compliments to boss or customers; Offer sexual services. 2. How did you find out that you were expected to do those things? How did you feel about it? 3. Have unpaid responsibilities ever interfered with paid work? If yes, please describe. If a participant asked for an example, I mentioned the following: Kept you from looking for a paid job; Kept you from accepting a paid job because hours conflicted with unpaid responsibilities; Turned down or not eligible for promotion because couldn't work extra hours, couldn't travel or move because of unpaid responsibilities; Had to quit a paid job. 4. Has paid work ever interfered with your unpaid responsibilities? If yes, please describe. 175 Section IV. CENTRALITY OF WORK TO IDENTITY AND MEANING 1. Compared to other parts of your life, how important to your identity are unpaid responsibilities such as housework and taking care of other people? What about in the past? Where does your value of doing good deeds and helping others come from? 2. Compared to other parts of your life, how important to your identity is paid work? What about in the past? 3. If you could live your life over, what kind of work would you want to do? 4. Are you more self-protective now than ever before? Able to set better or more limits for yourself, say no or turn someone down that years ago you wouldn't have? If so, why do you think that is? Section V. DEMOGRAPHICS/DIMENSIONS 1. DATE OF BIRTH When were you born? 2. PLACE OF BIRTH Where were you born? 3. ETHNICITY How would you describe your ethnicity? 4. GENERATIONS REMOVED FROM IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE: Where were your parents born? 176 5. INCOME/CLASS: What are your sources of income? Have you experienced any significant changes in income? If so, when? How much? Why? How would you describe yourself in terms of class? For example, do you consider yourself working class, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class or upper class? 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