Contributors use a feminist perspective to explore the impact of ageing on gender roles in the workplace and in retirement; in marital and other relationships; in community support networks and in older women's own perceptions. A range of research approaches are used, including qualitative studies giving a voice to older women. A concluding chapter draws out the implications of the book.

This book is a follow-up to Arber and Ginn's award winning Connecting Gender and Ageing (1995). It contains original chapters from eminent writers on gender and ageing, addressing newly emergent areas within gender and ageing, including gender identity and masculinity in later life. Early work on gender and ageing was dominated by a focus on older women. The present collection breaks with this tradition by emphasizing changing gender roles and relationships, gender identity and an examination of masculinities in midlife and later life. A key theme running through the book is the need to reconceptualize partnership status, in order to understand the implications for women and men of widowhood, divorce and new forms of relationships, such as Living Apart Together (LAT-relationships). Another is the influence of socio-economic circumstances on how ageing is experienced and transitions are negotiated. The book illustrates new ways of thinking about old age and indicates policy implications, especially concerning the nature of service provision for older people. It will change the ways in which social scientists conceptualize later life. Written with undergraduate students and researchers in mind, Gender and Ageing: Changing Roles and Relationships will be an invaluable text for those studying social gerontology, sociology of later life, gender studies, health and community care and social policy.

This book is a follow-up to Arber and Ginn's award winning Connecting Gender and Ageing (1995). It contains original chapters from eminent writers on gender and ageing, addressing newly emergent areas within gender and ageing, including gender identity and masculinity in later life. Early work on gender and ageing was dominated by a focus on older women. The present collection breaks with this tradition by emphasizing changing gender roles and relationships, gender identity and an examination of masculinities in midlife and later life. A key theme running through the book is the need to reconceptualize partnership status, in order to understand the implications for women and men of widowhood, divorce and new forms of relationships, such as Living Apart Together (LAT-relationships). Another is the influence of socio-economic circumstances on how ageing is experienced and transitions are negotiated. The book illustrates new ways of thinking about old age and indicates policy implications, especially concerning the nature of service provision for older people. It will change the ways in which social scientists conceptualize later life. Written with undergraduate students and researchers in mind, Gender and Ageing: Changing Roles and Relationships will be an invaluable text for those studying social gerontology, sociology of later life, gender studies, health and community care and social policy.

This study establishes age as a category of literary history, delineating age in its interaction with gender and narrative genre. Based on the historical premise that the view of ageing as a burden emerges as a specific narrative in the late eighteenth century, the study highlights how the changing experience of ageing is shaped by that of gender. By reading the Bildungsroman as a 'coming of age' novel, the book asks how the telling of a life in time affects individual age narratives. Bringing together the different perspectives of age and disability studies, the book argues that illness is already an important issue in the Bildungsroman's narratives of ageing. This theoretical stance provides new interpretations of canonical novels, visiting authors such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Samuel Beckett, and Jonathan Franzen. Drawing on the link between age and illness in the Bildungsroman's age narratives, the genre of 'dementia narrative' is presented as one of the directions which the Bildungsroman takes after its classical period. Applying these theoretical perspectives to canonical novels of the nineteenth century and to the new genre of 'dementia narrative', the volume also provides new insights into literary and genre history. This book introduces a new theoretical approach to cultural age studies and offers a comprehensive analysis of the connection between narratology, literary theory, gender and age studies.

Contributors use a feminist perspective to explore the impact of ageing on gender roles in the workplace and in retirement; in marital and other relationships; in community support networks and in older women's own perceptions. A range of research approaches are used, including qualitative studies giving a voice to older women. A concluding chapter draws out the implications of the book.

Nations that are raising retirement ages appear to work on the assumption that there is appropriate employment available for people who are expected to retire later. 'Gender, ageing and extended working life' challenges both this narrative, and the gender-neutral way the expectation for extending working lives is presented in most policy-making circles. The international contributors to this book - part of the Ageing in a Global Context series - apply life-course approaches to understanding evolving definitions of work and retirement. They consider the range of transitions from paid work to retirement that are potentially different for women and men in different family circumstances and occupational locations, and offer solutions governments should consider to enable them to evaluate existing policies. Based on evidence from Australia, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, this is essential reading for researchers and students, and for policymakers who formulate and implement employment and pensions policy at national and international levels.

What does it mean to grow old in America today? Is 'successful aging' our responsibility? What will happen if we fail to 'grow old gracefully'? Especially for women, the onus on the aging population in the United States is growing rather than diminishing. Gender, race, and sexual orientation have been reinterpreted as socially constructed phenomena, yet aging is still seen through physically constructed lenses. The second edition of Margaret Cruikshank's Learning to Be Old helps put aging in a new light, neither romanticizing nor demonizing it. Featuring new research and analysis, expanded sections on gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender aging and critical gerontology, and an updated chapter on feminist gerontology, the second edition even more thoroughly than the first looks at the variety of different forces affecting the progress of aging. Cruikshank pays special attention to the fears and taboos, multicultural traditions, and the medicalization and politicization of natural processes that inform our understanding of age. Through it all, we learn a better way to inhabit our age whatever it is.