Australia, like most Western countries, has a rapidly ageing population. One of the social consequences of this demographic trend will be that the number of retirees will continue to increase. In particular there will be growing numbers of women who retire, as more women participate in paid employment outside the home. Given these trends, it is surprising that little is known about the retirement experiences of women. This paper goes some way towards exploring some of the issues concerning the way in which women think about and plan for their retirement.

Many authors have pointed to the neglect of this issue in the field of both sociology and social gerontology (Arber and Ginn, 1991; Szinovacz, 1983). While some important research has explored the retirement experiences of women (see for example Erdner and Guy, 1990; Fox, 1977; Hatch, 1990) however, more often it has been studied only by looking at the extent to which it is different from the retirement of men. Similarly, many authors have sought to identify the differences in predictors of retirement satisfaction by using the same indicators for both men and women and simply comparing the differences (for example Collette, 1984; Lawton, 1983; Seccombe and Lee, 1986). Given the differences in work history and life experiences between men and women, there is little reason to assume that the factors influencing men’s and women’s retirement will be the same. Any approach which takes for granted the similarities between men’s and women’s retirement therefore, fails to acknowledge the retirement of women as a process in itself, distinct and separate from the retirement of their husbands or other men. Rather than assuming that the factors important in shaping women’s retirement experiences will be the same as those affecting men’s, this paper argues for the need to step back from this position and examine the retirement of women as a process in itself.

The most common reason put forward by social gerontologists for the neglect of the issue of women’s retirement is that traditionally, retirement is understood as a male phenomenon only affecting women in so much as their husbands leave the domain of the public to join them in the sphere of the private (see for example Fennell et. al., 1994; Arber and Ginn, 1991). The assumption underlying this male centered view of retirement is that women do not work and therefore do not retire. Similarly, there is the belief that for women who do work, their transition from paid employment to retirement is unproblematic and less stressful than for men, as paid work is not as central a part in the lives of women as it is for men. While some authors have questioned the whole notion of retirement as a critical life event for either sex (for example Matthews and Brown, 1988) I would suggest that this view has been used more as an excuse for not studying women’s retirement than anything grounded in the reality of the work ethic.

This paper argues that retirement is not simply an economic transition, but a social process which is shaped and constructed by social factors and experienced through social relations. It argues that in the case of women’s retirement, this is particularly so, for reasons associated with their lack of choice in retirement timing due to family and personal responsibilities, as well as pressure from husbands to conform to the role of wife and home maker. The central premise of this paper therefore is that viewing retirement as a social process provides a framework for understanding the ways in which women’s experiences of retirement are shaped. This paper draws on material obtained from discussions held with older women to illustrate the ways in which their experiences of retirement are shaped by traditional gender roles and expectations. It illustrates the ways in which older women make sense of their own retirement and the factors which influence their adjustment to their exit from the work force. Finally, I will argue that in order to make sense of the experiences of older retired women, there must be a shift in thought processes away from the male centred view of retirement and towards a more holistic understanding which encompasses the social as well as the economic and political factors influencing the retirement process.

The material used in this paper forms part of a larger study for a Ph D thesis. This material was obtained from focus groups held with a range of older people from a variety of different socio-economic backgrounds in Metropolitan Victoria. In all, 22 focus groups were held with both men and women from January to April, 1997. The women varied in age from 54 to 90 with the bulk of participants being in their 70’s. Most of the participants were either married or widowed, with only a small number being divorced or separated. The women came from a variety of occupational backgrounds, including managerial positions and factory workers, with varied work histories. The material used for this paper draws on the experiences of women who ‘retired’ from either full time or part time employment.

One of the most striking issues to arise from the discussions I held with older women was the lack of preparation they had undertaken for their prospective retirement. This lack of preparation was obvious in all areas: financial planning, leisure planning and even thoughts about when they were actually going to retire. In part, this lack of preparation can be explained by the way women internalise the widely held view that retirement is a male phenomenon that requires little aforethought by women. Women commonly asserted that "women don’t retire"; that is, they do not retire from full time paid employment to a life of full time leisure. However, the reasons why women have not planned more thoroughly for their retirement are far more complex than simply a matter of widely held misconceptions about the retirement process. They involve the traditional segregation of gender roles, such as women take on to be care givers and never return to the work force or simply that for them to think about and plan for their retirement is to acknowledge the fact that they are contributors to the family economy, which challenges the traditional authority of the male of the household. These views were evident in much of what these women spoke about.

As I stated earlier, the process of retirement has been and continues largely to be seen as something relevant only to men. Evidence from this study suggests that this has serious consequences for the way in which women plan for and think about their own retirement. One of the key ways in which women perceived the differences between their and men’s retirement was to talk about the way that their husbands had spent time thinking about what they were going to do when they stopped working. When I asked women whether they had done this, they commonly replied that they had thought things like "wont it be nice when..." but had not given it any serious consideration. The main time when women had discussed their retirement in any detail was when their husbands had started to make plans for them both. One woman stated:

Similarly, many women talked at length about the ways in which they saw retirement as something that they really didn’t need to give any thought to. The reasons for this however were varied. One woman stated:

This woman’s experience was common to many others and provides a very good example of the ways in which women have internalised the idea that retirement is something that their spouses do, even when both partners are working. This view of their own retirement was evident even among women who had spent many years building a career. For example, one retired senior nurse said:

Another states:

The experiences of these women illustrate the thinking of many women, that their retirement was somehow not important enough to think about or plan for. This cannot however, simply be explained away in terms of women’s lack of commitment to their employment or careers, as the experience of the senior nurse illustrates. One of the possible reasons for these experiences as mentioned by many women, is their life work patterns. Women leave work for a variety of reasons throughout their lifetime, most often to have a family, and develop a view of retirement as simply another transitional period, rather than a major life event. This came out very clearly when women spoke about the way they viewed the event of leaving work.

Another states:

For these women, life experience has been an important factor in shaping their retirement experiences and the way in which they think about them. Women who have left and returned to paid employment outside the home over the course of their lives view their full time "retirement" as simply another move back into the home. For these women, it is not a major life event that needs to be planned for and thought about, rather a continuity of experience developed over the course of their lives. This is a crucial difference in the experiences of men and women with regards retirement. For men, retirement represents a permanent change of lifestyle, the cessation of full time paid employment which has been their main role for the majority of their adult lives. Women however, experience a variety of work-home transitions and cannot frame their leaving work permanently in these same terms. This also leads in to another key issue in terms of retirement as a transition for the many women who leave work to take on roles as carer.

As other research has found, many women in this study had also ‘retired’ to look after elderly parents or sick spouses. For these women, they saw little point in returning to work at such a late age, even if they had have been able to secure themselves a job. A typical scenario was given by this women, who had left work at 56 to care for her elderly father, who died 3 years later:

Given that women are usually the ones who leave paid employment to assume a care giving role, it is not surprising to find that many of them think like the women referred to above. As retirement is constructed around leaving full time paid employment to pursue full time leisure, this way of viewing the process is not reflective of the experiences of many older working women, who leave for personal reasons, rather than choice and simply never return. In this context then, it is hardly surprising that many women simply do not think about their own retirement process in this situation. Often, as the experience of the woman below illustrates, women who leave to assume a care giving role plan to return to employment at the cessation of that role and therefore do not even consider the prospect of retirement.

These women clearly do not experience retirement as the event to be planned for and thought about. Women in this study who left for family reasons had neither the time, nor the mindset to think about their leaving as possible retirement. In part, this is because of the way retirement is perceived as ceasing full time employment to pursue leisure activities. It is precisely because of this dominant understanding of what retirement entails, that women do not think about their own experiences in these terms. Retirement for these women, entails a period of care giving or family responsibilities which, after it finishes, moves to a period of "full time leisure". More importantly, these women do not view their experience in terms of retirement; for them it is transition rather than cessation; a gradual easing into "retirement" after a period of something else which is not paid employment. The result is that these women do not see their life situation as ‘retired’, yet by the prescribed definition, they are.

Another important issue women raised with respect to their own retirement is their lack of involvement in financial planning for their retirement. While most of the men I spoke with talked about the importance of saving and the role of superannuation in planning retirement, women stated again and again that they had done no financial planning or organisation for their retirement. Women certainly discussed the importance of planning and preparation however, very few had actually participated in the process. On the whole, there was a sense that it was primarily the responsibility of the spouse to organise this, as illustrated by this woman:

And another:

Women who had spent a number of years in paid employment outside the home continually stated that they had had no idea whether they even had superannuation, let alone how much they had. Many women who had worked in semi-professional areas such as nursing or teaching, spoke about the fact that they did get "a little" superannuation or some sort of payment when they left their employment, but that it was not income upon which they had planned for in their retirement. Even women who were single had given very little thought to their retirement incomes:

While some women stated that they had been to see a financial adviser, they had always gone with their husbands and it was generally couples who had owned their own business or had a number of assets to manage. In most cases, their spouses had undertaken the initiative to sort out their finances in terms of retirement incomes.

Given the growing awareness in the community about superannuation benefits, it is possible that women in the future will have a better understanding and knowledge of their prospective finances upon their retirement. For women retiring now, however, how they are going to manage financially when the cease work is given little thought. In part this can be explained by their lack of retirement planning more generally - if they don’t think about their own retirement then it stands to reasons that they will give little thought to its’ financial implications. The issue of financial planning for retirement, and women’s lack thereof, goes beyond this however. It is an issue which again reflects the dominant male retirement scenario and traditional gender relations whereby the male manages the money in his role as the breadwinner. If women view their work and therefore their retirement as secondary to the employment of their spouse, then it is only an extension of this that they view their financial planning in the same way. This is an issue which needs much further investigation if future generations of female retirees are going to successfully manage and plan for their retirement incomes.

None of the women I spoke with in the course of the focus groups had retired after her partner. This adds a key component to our understanding of why women do not think about their own retirement in the same way as do men. As I have already illustrated, the ideology of the male breadwinner and dependent wife was very powerful among these women and is evident in the ways in which they think about their own retirement and their financial planning. This issue is most clear however, in the experiences of those women who had gone from full time paid employment to retirement. For these women, the timing of their retirement was centred around when their husbands were going to retire in order to ensure they would retire first. In explaining why this women ‘chose’ to retire when she did, she stated:

The women I spoke with about this talked at length about how it "wouldn’t be right" for the husband to retire first and that it just "wasn’t the thing to do". Some women explicitly stated that they had talked about retirement with their husbands with just an assumption made by both that they would retire at the same time, or more commonly, the woman first. For some women, this decision was a matter of personal choice:

For this woman, her decision to retire slightly earlier than her husband was centred around wanting to spend leisure time together and was based on love and personal commitment to her marriage. For a large number of women however, this decision was hardly one of personal choice:

The experiences presented in these example highlight the obligation that many women feel to retire in order to conform to traditional marriage roles and maintain marital harmony. These women experienced enormous pressure both by husbands and also by other family members to give up their employment. It is certainly arguable that these women experienced real ‘choice’ in the timing of their retirement and provides further insight as to why little thought is given to their own retirement. These experiences also highlight the ways in which women view their own retirement as secondary to the retirement of men.

It is evident from the material presented above that women’s experiences of retirement cannot be understood in terms of the "cease work, start leisure" discourse traditionally associated with retirement. This paper has argued that these experiences can only be understood in light of traditional gender roles and stereotypes concerning women’s work and retirement, which are viewed as secondary and unimportant to the processes of men. This paper has provided concrete examples of the ways in which women have internalised this type of thinking, namely:

w their inability to consider retirement as something which will happen to them or needs preparation

w their lack of choice in their ability to continue working after their partners have retired

w their lack of participation in financial planning

Moreover, this paper has also argued that for women, the shift from paid employment to other activities often involves a period of transition, which results in retirement but was unintended at the time of leaving employment. This can be seen from the experiences of women who have left to assume a car giving role or some other family responsibility. For these women, retirement does not involve the immediate shift from paid work to leisure, but is a process of adjustment and realisation that paid work is no longer viable or achievable.

If we are to better understand the way in which many women experience retirement, there must be a shift in the way we view, consider and understand the whole process. We need to search for a new framework from which to view these experiences is needed, one which is not centred on the work/retirement dichotomy, but rather should approach women’s retirement as a fluid and shifting state. Such a view must take into account the effect of life history on the experiences of women retiring, in that retirement is not viewed as a major life change but rather as a continuation of the changes in personal circumstances and conditions many women experience over the course of their lives. A new framework for understanding retirement must also acknowledge the power of traditional gender roles over women’s lives in both the choices they make about their retirement and also the way in which they view their own retirement.

Finally, any framework for understanding women’s retirement must take as its first premise, not to seek explanations solely in terms of how women’s experiences are different to those of men. There is much work still to be done in this area. By sharing with you some of the experiences of the women in this study, my aim is to give you as researchers and practitioners some insights into just some of issues confronting women in their retirement, that you may take away and incorporate into your own ways of thinking.