The aging of the population has forced a rethink of this conceptualisation. The proportion of Australia's population aged 65 years and over is predicted to rise from 16% to 27% by 2031 (ABS, 1994: FIGURE 1). This fact has persuaded governments to extend superannuation so as to limit age pension payments in the future; and to consider ways in which health costs can be contained. However, since women outlive men, the majority of the age 65+ group are and will continue to be women; e.g., in 1993 there were 76 men for every 100 women in this age group (ABS, 1994). In the birth cohorts now reaching 65, many of these women have spent long years in unpaid and/or low-paid work, and have had little opportunity to accumulate employment savings or superannuation. However, they have social security rights and, often, access to their husbands' superannuation benefits.

The baby boomers are seen as presenting a more difficult problem. The first of these very large birth cohorts turned 50 this year, and will thus reach the traditional retirement age - 65 - in fifteen years from now. As the baby boom continued for a long time in Australia - aided by our migration program - further and larger waves will follow close behind. While women of these cohorts have much more workforce experience than their predecesors, they too have typically spent considerable periods out of the paid workforce or in low-paid employment that fitted in with their family work. Increased divorce rates and single parenthood mean that many now also lack access in later life to the savings and superannuation of a partner (Clare & Tulpule, 1994). Their economic futures under a more superannuation-oriented system thus raise many questions. Most obviously, there is the fact that women's inputs to society - in child rearing, homemaking and community service - are usually not paid, so that they are not easily translatable into economic terms. At the same time, there is widespread agreement that this unpaid work is essential to society, and needs to be recognised. How are these economic and extra-economic factors to be reconciled?

There is some interesting recent Australian research in this area. Leonard (1996) studied a group of 80 Australian women who graduated from a particular selective girls high school in 1971. Most had been married and most had children. The most striking finding was the ever-increasing workload taken on on by this group of well-educated women over the 20 years since leaving school. ABS figures show that women's workload in general peaks by age 34, but for this group total hours worked (including paid work, education, child care and voluntary community work) increased from 40 hours in their early 20s to 80 by midlife, and did not yet show signs of decline. (Not surpringly, exhaustion was a rather common complaint). The women had pursued complex pathways in the course of integrating their various commitments - e.g. retraining so as to be able to move into teaching or other jobs compatible with child care; starting their own businesses for similar reasons; giving up jobs, interests and friends to accompany husbands who had been posted elsewhere, or who wanted to set up a business or to study elsewhere; and caring for seriously ill or handicapped children. Despite a high level of professional training and skills, many were not thus at midlife in the position to have planned ahead for later life. Most of those who had pursued a 'masculine social clock' were on high incomes and well able to make superannuation provision for themselves; whereas the majority who had followed a more 'feminine social clock' were much less able to do, despite good qualifications and working equally long hours.

Onyx and Benton (1995) interviewed 25 women aged 45-65 who were high achievers inhe field of human services in Sydney. Most women in the sample were unable to consider retirement as a meaningful concept for themselves, and few had made any systematic plans for it. The authors note several reasons for this. Firstly, most did not make a distinction between paid and unpaid work. They had worked all their lives, sometimes in unpaid caring work or social action work, sometimes in part-time work, sometimes fulltime work. The particular mix shifted constantly throughtheir lifetime, and continued to do so among those who were offically 'retired' but continuing to work on various projects, some paid, some unpaid.

Second, many had inadequate financial security, and could not afford to leave paid employment. This was true even of some on very high salaries, who had come to the job late, and were catching up by at last buying a house of making a similar commitment. More generally, Onyx and Benton report that their sample just did not want to talk about the issue of retirement. Those in their forties felt they had just finished child rearing and started to blossom, and retirement and ageing was the last thing they wanted to think about. In fact, several admitted to ageist feelings - to think about retirement planning was to admit to getting old and inactive, when they were bursting to get into adult life. So even those who had superannuation did not seem to take it very seriously, and the married were inclined to rely on their husband's superannuation, and did not particularly want to know much about it.

A similar conclusion was reached in another Australian study by Rosenman & Wincour (1990) who concluded that a majority of women saw it as a man's responsibility to plan for later life, and were in consequence likely to find themselves on the age pension or other government benefit if and when he left the scene. It is supported by the findings of overseas studies (e.g. Price-Bonham & Johnson, 1982), and of a later study by Onyx (1996) with a much larger sample of Sydney men and women. Reasons given by women in this sample for not taking out superannuation included not having access to super funds; not being in long-term employment so that it was not worthwhile; spending their money on the family or the mortgage, whch seemed more important; being paid too little to contribute; not wanting to think about getting old; seeing it as the husband's responsibility; and not understanding super. All in all, an impressive sets of negatives. Onyx calls for more education of women regarding superannuation.

A final issue raised by Onyx & Benton concerns the activities planned for later life. Most of their women wished to continue in paid employment as long as they could, but they wanted less of it, so as to have time for themselves and for other interests, including building houses or extensive gardens (One proposed a garden'rather like Sissinghurst'.) This seems a far cry from older concepts of later life as involving disengagement and the rocking chair image. Onyx and Benton conclude that traditional concepts of work and retirement are simply inappropriate for today's professional women.

The present project involves two samples - a pilot study with a sample of generally well-educated women, which is just finishing, and a larger one (with R. Leonard) of lower income women in Sydney's western suburbs. We are specially concerned with two questions. Firstly, how does a woman develop an effective and socially contributive approach to aging? Secondly, what differences exist between those now of retirement age and those of the subsequent, baby boomer cohorts. The present paper presents some work in progress material from the pilot study.

An organising concept in our study is the career, defined not just as the ocupational career, but also family career, social career, health career, creativity career and ideological career. We also make use of Ravenna Helson's concept of the sex-differentiated social clocks. which she developed in her longitudinal study of women who graduated from a US women's college in 1958-60 (Helson, Mitchell & Moane, 1984; Helson & Moane, 1987; Helson & Stewart, 1994). Helson divided her sample into those who followed a feminine social clock (defined as marrying and having a first child at age 28, and never being srongly committed to a career) and those following a masculine clock (defined as marrying late or not at all, and strong commitment to a career) and she also described other smaller groups who never got onto any clock at all, or made a substantial change following a divorce or similar event. Our suspicion is that today's typical 'feminine social clock' has become rather more masculinised than that of Helson's sample, but we nevertheless find this distinction a valuable one. For example, Helson found that between age 27 and 52 the group overall increased in self-confidence, competence, sociability, understanding, cheerfulness, affectionateness, and in particular, independence and dominance. Closer analysis however showed that the masculine social clock people were already higher on these last two qualities at age 20 and 27, and continued to be higher as the whole group increased; while a subgroup who had been out of the workforce completely between age 20 and 43 failed to show any increase in independence. This could be interpreted to mean that 'traditional' roles are more likely to be chosen by the less confident, and that chosing them militates against the subsequent development of those qualities - like confidence and independence - that are associated with successful aging.

I am also increasingly interested in the attitudes that seem to hold women back from retirement planning. One obvious influence is the fact that women typically start their work careers quite late, or at least blossom in them quite late, so that they are not sympathetic to thinking about the end when they are just at the beginning. A second concerns attitudes to money. A third concerns attitudes to ageing, and ageism, which is an intriguing issue in these days of demographic change and graying populations. At a broader level, we make use of McAdams' (McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992) concept of the personal life story. This term is used to refer to the narrative that a woman constructs to connect her past, present and future into a meaningful story that makes sense of the past and directs her present and future actions.

The pilot stage of the project has involved focussed interviews with 30 women from three age groups - 40-45, 50-55, and 60-65 years - selected to represent different age and cohort effects. This pilot sample, which I am talking about today, is generally well-educated, although not necessarily of middle class origin; and some only became well-educated at midlife, as mature age students, after long periods spent in low-paid and/or low-status jobs. Our main sample, which is now being interviewed, is a lesser-educated group from Sydney's western suburbs. Neither of these samples of course allow us to distinguish between age and cohort effects, but we plan to follow up the western suburbs sample longitudinally. In this paper I will be discussing the youngest group - the 40-45 year olds - in the pilot sample. What they have had to say is in many ways in line with previous studies, but also adds to it. There are in particular four themes I want to present in this paper.

1. Life begins at 40, or maybe 35.

In the preface to his book on adult development in men, Daniel Levinson (1978) decribes how when looking into his shaving mirror at the age of 40 he reflected that 'folk wisdom tell us that life begins at 40, but the anxiety is that it may end there'. This was not the issue with our midlife women. One of our questions, following McAdams (McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992) was to ask them to consider they were writing their autobiography, and to nominate how they would divide up the chapters. A typical way of dividing up the life cycle was childhood, early adulthood when they saw themselves as just going along with whatever their situation was - 'flowing' was a common word - followed by a greater 'taking control' from around 35-40 years. This was not just a question of marriage and child-rearing, as the single and childless told similar stories.

For example, one single 43 year old woman who had followed her father into accountancy work gave her first chapter to childhood,

'... and then there'd be the period (Ch.2) of about 10/15 years where I tried to conform as I saw it and it didn't work so that was like a doldrums I suppose... until I had the good luck to get the sack... and then what would call the next stage (Ch. 3) where I started to do something about changing, something that means a new beginning... and now, (Ch. 4) I'm, I feel as if I'm beginning the second phase of that beginning.'

Another 45- year old married mothers who was asked about retirement said she could not think about it because she 'hadn't even qualified yet' . She had been doing low paid jobs for many years to make money but was now doing a degree in something that really interested her, and hoped to make a career out of it.

A health professional said that she

'...would have to put my first 20 years in one big package, cause there's a lot of my childhood I don't remember; then the next 20 years... that would be a pretty insecure time in my life, I mean it was exciting but I would hate to live it again, My 30s was much more. comfortable, and my forties is even better, and I sort of feel it's going to keep going in that direction, getting better, from now on...'

A deserted mother of four who had spent some years on the Supporting Mothers Pension and then in clerical work was also now studying for a qualification and saw the next 30 years as 'reward time'

'Ah yeah, yeah that was the one thing that I consciously thinking, that I don't want ... to go back and do executive assistant, I want something that enjoy going to work for, that I feel is making a contribution to people and that's worthwhile.'

There is a longstanding concept in the adult development literature that sex roles become less differentiated at midlife, with women becoming more assertive and independent. However what our sample were describing seems to go a bit beyond this, perhaps because modern society does indeed offer many opportunities for midlife women to channel their energies into rewarding areas.

One consequence of these late blossomings was an intention to keep working until a late age, generally somewhere in the 70s, although probably part-time. For example a university academic was planning to shift to a fractional appointment and maybe diversify into consultancies

'As long as I, my brain can still function I guess I see myself as working at least part time for virtually my whole life, I mean maybe that won't be true but that's what I see now, I don't see that I will have to leave it until I'm not capable any more, so....I can see me working into my seventies... My family tends to live until you hit them over the head with an axe almost so I sort of see a life up until my nineties ... so working into my seventies is something that feels quite feasible, possible, confident for me.

Others had in mind various kinds of consultancies and contract work. For example, one woman described a vigorous 88 year old mother ( a retired business woman) who still played golf and drove a car, but then went onto comment that

'Well I actually don't plan on a retirement like my mother's generation where you, once you finished work you didn't go back and you just retired and had social life and then got to the point where you're worried because all your friends died off before you did, I think in twenty years time I'll just continue with whatever I'm set up for.'

This intention to continue work is something also reported by Onyx and Benton (1996) among their community worker sample. It sits oddly with the evidence of increased early retirements in recent decades: for example ABS figures show that the proportion of men aged 55-59 who were not in the laborforce rose from 11.7% in 1973 to 21.7% in 1983 and 29.8% in 1993 (ABS, 1994). Some of these early retirements are of course Clayton's retirements, where the retired person then moves onto another form of employment - ABS figures shows that the proportion of early retirees who gave 'employment or other' reasons more than doubled between 1983 and 1992 (ABS, 1994). Nevertheless, it still only accounted for 15% of all retirees aged over 45 years, with ill-health and a desire for more leisure the most common reasons given male early retirees.

It may be therefore that a real sex difference is involved. Studies of retirement have typically found that while men's retirement decisions are influenced by their health and the availability of alternative income sources, that of women is less well predicted by these factors. Older studies found that their retirement decisions were more likely to be influenced by the husband's time of retirement, or the need to provide care for the husband or for other relatives (Palmore et al., 1985). However, these factors too are less effective predictors in recent US studies, which find women's retirement decisions to be something of a puzzle (O'Rand, Henretta & Krecker, 1992). Bee (1996) suggests that it may be a natural outcome of the increase in work participation by women in their 50s and 60s (Fig 2, p.104). (FIGURE 2).

2. Bricks and mortar

The introduction of national superannuation in Australia has not been without its problems. Low income and short-term employees complain that much of their compulsory super savings get lost on administrative fees, and one line of thinking has it that the money should be available to assist in home purchase and other costs during the life cycle squeeze period of childrearing. As noted above, Onyx found that the women in her samples saw superannuation as largely men's responsibility, and were those who lost their men though death or divorce were often left impoverished. Our sample also were not very interested in super, although some were in super schemes. They were inclined to describe themselves as 'not very materialistic' and 'able to live on quite a small income', but so far as security for the future was concerned, what they were interested in was bricks and mortar, and they saw this as a much more reliable source of security than superannuation.

'... I wanted to be able to work in a field where I could keep on working at any age provided I was healthy because I didn't feel that superannuation, particularly as a woman was going to be any sort of bet at all, I have a small superannuation fund but I'm not going to get much out of it, so I knew I wouldn't be able to rely on that and quite frankly I don't trust any of the plans that are prepared for the super funds in the future cause I think it's too much of a worry having somebody else manage money we can't get hold of. I come from a background where you sort of have the bricks and mortar as your basic security and you manage your own life if you've got any awareness, so I wanted to have a means of earning money at the value of the time, that, the value of whatever year it was, because I've seen people who've retired maybe 10/15 years ago, you know their money has lost value and they haven't got the money they thought they'd have...But my mother's sort of managed her assets quite well with real estate, so that's the way that I have thought about it too.'

Another with a history of low-paid jobs now starting a higher level job

'If I can invest money in something that I can control, like an extra flat, that I could have for an income much later in life, that I'd like to do, I've got no faith in the government superannuation scheme because the charges are so high, I've had superannuation from casual jobs and it's just been whittled away; and I don't know anything about the private sector schemes. I think if it was something solid like real estate I'd feel more secure..'

A single mother who had spent time on the Supporting Parent Benefit described it as

'Very degrading... I remember the day I went down to have to apply for it, I felt like oh, almost like a criminal, that I was applying for this handout, I mean having to go down every 2 weeks and put your form in and front up to the social security, oh, I used to hate, I just hated doing it... My parents have been on the age pension, plus my ex-husband's parents as well, it doesn't have the same sort of stigma attached to it, but I think maybe in generations to come it probably will, with people who, now, because society is so geared now towards superannuation and investment.... I've only got superannuation from 5 years ago when I started working full time, I haven't like most people, from 20 or whatever, like particularly men ... so I feel at a disadvantage that way and that I'm starting late to try and plan for my future, and at the moment I'm thinking of buying some investment property and renting it, although that a bit scary as a prospect...'

'Well I've still got superannuation, I've got some investments and things and actually my mother sold her house, they've just moved into a home unit and she sold her house and she divvyed up the proceeds amongst the children so she gave me a large amount of money last year , which certainly will go a long way towards adding to the superannuation that I've got to keep me in my old age...'

What this seems to suggest is that it is not just that women are uneducated about superannuation, they are also distrustful of it, and much happier about owning property that is in their own hands. Public education programs therefore need to come to terms with this distrust, rather than concentrating on explaining the intricacies of super provisions.

3. Filiation

Filiation is defined by the OED as sonship or daughtership, and it is the latter that I refer to here. Parent-child relations in later life are a fascinating topic, but most commonly discussed in terms of contact and caregiving - who does it, why they do it, and to what extent is it a burden. We also are collecting information on these issues also, but what we find of more interest is the influence of parents as role models of ageing, and as sources of economic support and potential inheritance.

'Certainly with my father, I'd like to avoid just about everything my father did, it seems to be my father has planned nothing for his retirement, has not dealt with any of the issues in his life, and is just a sad, lonely, angry man and, it makes me sad if I really want to think about it but he also makes me angry because he's relatively healthy and he just will not participate in life.... he's dead becfore he has died you could say... but for my mother, there's lot in the way she approaches things that I could look at and say I would like to do that, I mean I would do different things, but she's quite independent, she's doing things now (since a late life divorce), she's gaining in confidence if anything in her whole life, I think she found the relationship with my father much less than satisfying but also, it was an environment in which she couldn't develop herself... '

'I think my mother actually kept the family going initially because he came back from the war not very well qualified and had to study at night and she supported him while he got his qualifications as an accountant ... and so then she was able to help him set up his practice after that but she, her money contributed to the household while he was getting established...I've actually achieved all the major things in my recent life since he died, that was, I felt that I was sort of released from that parental pressure, of somebody wanting me to do so and so and you know having to fight against him. So I think it is my mother who has influenced me most... and she is quite a model of how to be old, very active and independent. Actually, we don't really get on all that well, I think we irritate each other a bit, so I try to keep our time together short, like, little and often, but I hope I have inherited her genes for aging well..'

'Well it's made me determined to um, remain extremely active into my old age and also to keep my mind going, because I feel she doesn't do enough... they've stopped taking the newspaper which I'm very cross about, but they say oh no we never have time to read it, it's too big, we watch the news she says, well, the television news is pretty awful ... yes, I think I will keep getting the newspaper. My grandmother kept reading the newspaper until she was over ninety'

'My mother... did very well after my father died, you know she found out how to get his money and how to buy a flat, went out and started socialising and .........I know I've got to be really careful with what she left me, um, because it's, the flat isn't worth a great deal of money but she left it to me so that I would always have a roof over my head.. and the chance to do some of the things that are important to me'

It has been pointed out that the early 21st century will see the most massive turnover of wealth in Australian history, as the parents of the baby boomers die and their property - real estate in particular - passes to their children. Some U.S. writers have seen this as likely to cause a spending boom among the baby boomer inheritors, who don't suffer from their parents' 'Depression mentality' (Dychtwald, 1989). However, in this sample it was seen as something that would assist the woman to continue in part-time paid work along with unpaid pursuits like community work or creative arts.

4. Health

All the sample were aware that maintaining health was essential to their plans, but practices varied from regular gym classes and competitive sports to avoiding bad habits and 'stress'; but regardless of where they were along this dimension, there expectations of continued health tended to be high. Several thought that women's greater longevity was due to 'looking after themselves better'

'I'm not sure, but it just seems that I don't know many women who are in a bad state of health that they contributed to and they haven't done much about; whereas for men it seems to be more the other way around.'

At the same time, they were inclined to define health as self- perceived or enacted health rather than actual health problems, which made continued good health appear a more feasible proposition. For example, one said of a mother in her 80s that 'she's had hysterectomies, mastectomies, coronary artery grafts, but she's pretty healthy now'; whereas another mother also in her 80s was described as having become quite frail after her husband's death due to her dependent nature; i.e., it was her self-perceived ability to cope that was seen as the problem

These expectations of continued health may be over-optimistic. However, it is well-established in the gerontological literature that elderly people tend to rate their health as good even when, medically, it is not, and that these self-ratings are better predictors of survival than are their medical records (Schoenfeld et al., 1994) - so optimism about continued good health may not be too unrealistic.

Conclusion

The women in the sample I have been describing are not all well-off, but most have achieved a good level of education, by one means or another. Our current, main, project is using the findings from this pilot sample in interviews with a lower SES group of women, which also includes a number of quantitative measures. We hope to present material from this at a later AIFS conference.

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