{"title":"Embodied transitions: Cultural framings of menopause among minority ethnic women.","authors":"Susan Pickard, Susan Waigwa, Paula Briggs","doi":"10.1080/08952841.2026.2685579","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08952841.2026.2685579","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article explores how menopause is narrated, embodied, and re-signified by minority ethnic women in the UK, drawing on in-depth qualitative research with participants of Chinese and Black ethnicities. Dominant narratives in the Global North frequently frame menopause through a biomedical lens of loss, dysfunction, and hormonal deficit, or more recently, as a postfeminist site of \"ageless empowerment\" marked by pharmaceutical rescue. This study challenges both framings by foregrounding the culturally situated accounts of women whose experiences remain marginal within mainstream menopause discourse. Participants often interpreted menopause as a rite of passage - inflected with spiritual, moral, and generational significance - and located this transition within the wider reproductive life course and within culturally distinct epistemologies. Chinese-heritage women drew on the cosmology of Traditional Chinese Medicine and seven-year life cycles, while Black participants evoked ancestral wisdom, intergenerational legacies, and culturally embedded notions of \"strength\". While clinical encounters were often fraught with misrecognition or silence, most participants refused narratives of decline and framed their decision not to use Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) as a moral and culturally grounded choice rather than an outcome of exclusion. The paper argues for a reconceptualisation of menopause as a culturally mediated life transition and calls for greater narrative plurality in feminist and clinical understandings of ageing. By centring women's own meanings and metaphors, this research contributes to an emergent body of work that resituates midlife not as rupture or rescue, but as a site of reflection, reckoning, and redefinition.</p>","PeriodicalId":47001,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Women & Aging","volume":" ","pages":"1-17"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148253858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Crone futures: Ecofeminist reimaginings of aging and planetary ethics.","authors":"Ajeesh A K","doi":"10.1080/08952841.2026.2685574","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08952841.2026.2685574","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Older women are routinely positioned as culturally redundant under late-capitalist regimes that equate value with beauty, productivity, and reproductive futurity. This article intervenes in those decline narratives by developing the crone as a feminist figuration, understood as a situated and relational method for holding critique and possibility together. Bringing feminist ageing studies into conversation with ecofeminist, posthumanist, and decolonial feminist scholarship, and grounding the discussion in brief empirical illustrations from crone-identifying women and elder-led formations, I ask: what forms of ethical and epistemic work become thinkable when elderhood is read as an unevenly distributed location of vulnerability, memory, and relational endurance? I argue that thinking with the crone makes visible a mode of climate witnessing attuned to slow violence, intergenerational injustice, ecological grief, and more-than-human dependence, without romanticising old age or collapsing diverse older women into a single category. The analysis is conceptual and interdisciplinary: it traces how contemporary \"successful ageing\" discourses inherit earlier modern/colonial projects that disciplined women's bodies, knowledge, and reproduction, while also attending to counter-genealogies in which elder female figures carry different cosmological and ethical weight. The article's contribution to women's ageing scholarship lies in articulating crone epistemology as slow, situated knowledge that foregrounds limits, interdependence, and responsibility while remaining accountable to decolonial and intersectional difference.</p>","PeriodicalId":47001,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Women & Aging","volume":" ","pages":"1-13"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148212879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Calibrated grandmotherhood: how older rural Chinese women content creators navigate digital empowerment on Douyin.","authors":"Yingwen Wang","doi":"10.1080/08952841.2026.2680877","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08952841.2026.2680877","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Short-video platforms have expanded possibilities for public expression in China, yet older women in rural areas remain among the most digitally marginalised populations due to intersecting age, gender, and rural disparities. This study examines how those who actively create content on Douyin negotiate empowerment within significant structural constraints. The findings reveal that empowerment through platform participation is multidimensional and unevenly realised. Participants achieved recognition, social connection, and enhanced self-regard, outcomes that carry independent significance for women whose decades of care work went largely unacknowledged. Those who sought economic returns, however, faced compounding structural barriers rooted in educational history, platform predation, and normative constraints on feminine self-presentation. To navigate platform visibility while remaining within local moral boundaries, participants practiced the <i>calibrated grandmotherhood</i>, strategic self-presentation that aligns with normative expectations of respectable older femininity and algorithmic preferences. This calibration produces an empowerment paradox: the very agency that enables recognition reinforces rather than challenges the gendered age norms constraining these women. The study contributes to empowerment theory by demonstrating how, under conditions of intersecting marginalisation, effective agency and transformative agency may exist in tension, with platform affordances channelling agency into reproductive rather than transformative forms.</p>","PeriodicalId":47001,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Women & Aging","volume":" ","pages":"1-16"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148151280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Older women reclaiming agency in the films <i>My Favourite Cake</i> and <i>Fate</i>.","authors":"Gülçin Con Wright","doi":"10.1080/08952841.2026.2655451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08952841.2026.2655451","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Over the past decade, there has been a subtle but noticeable increase in the visibility of both older women actors and characters in the film industry. Even though many portrayals of older women in cinema continue to be characterized by sexist and ageist stereotypes, there has also been a rise in their more diverse and complex depictions. Drawing from critical feminist gerontology and feminist film studies, in this paper, I examine the portrayals of older women through a critical feminist thematic analysis of two recent films: <i>My Favourite Cake</i> [Keyke Mahboobe Man] from Iran and <i>Fate</i> [Mukadderat] from Turkey, both released in 2024. Each film is centred on an older widowed woman, Mahin and Sultan, who defy negative stereotypes about older women and restrictive social norms associated with widowhood by reclaiming agency to pursue their interests. Mahin decides to seek companionship after many long years of living alone, whilst Sultan pursues remarriage after her husband's death but eventually decides to work instead. However, the possibilities and challenges for reclaiming agency are shaped by variations in the intersection of gender and age with nationality, socioeconomic status, and rural-urban settings. These films showcase varied facets of exercising agency for older women and their different strategies for overcoming societal constraints. This study provides valuable insight into not only the changing depictions of older women but also how they can exercise their agency based on their capabilities over the life course, even in socio-political landscapes with conventional norms around aging and widowhood.</p>","PeriodicalId":47001,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Women & Aging","volume":" ","pages":"1-15"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147624151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Agency in later life: The unrecognised operatrices of a fragmented care system.","authors":"Glenn Möllergren","doi":"10.1080/08952841.2026.2643311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08952841.2026.2643311","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Contrasting predominant assumptions of women who live with age-related care needs as passive, unagentic, and helpless, this article explores agency exercised in everyday lives permeated by formal home care services. Using a narrative thematic analysis of interviews, diaries, and observations of three Swedish women in later life using home care services, this study examines their diverse ways of navigating and managing a care system that can be described as complex and fragmented. As users of domiciliary care, they lead, instruct, and educate staff; they prepare for and assist in carrying out service provision, coordinate service agents, and engage empathetically with staff to reduce stress levels. At times, they also protest, resist and criticise, or express contentment in spite of questionable service quality. The analysis conceptualises such manifestations of agency as a regime-dependent, situationally embedded striving to influence everyday life, encompassing not only overt, goal-directed actions but also seemingly passive or contradictory orientations such as withdrawal, acceptance, refusal, or even self-harming practices. The findings demonstrate how the participants - Betty, Ofelia, and Gunnel - each enact distinctive approaches: Betty pragmatically seeks to tailor services to her preferences, Ofelia critically challenges and attempts to influence the system, and Gunnel strives to maintain harmony through collaboration. Their extensive engagement contests assumptions that women in the so-called 'fourth age' have lost their agency. Instead, the study shows that, in becoming operatrices of the care system, they paradoxically uphold or even intensify their agency, which calls for recognising care users' influence over the services they rely on.</p>","PeriodicalId":47001,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Women & Aging","volume":" ","pages":"1-19"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147475857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Anne E Barrett, Brianna Soulie, Hope Mimbs, Avery Solis
{"title":"\"Not a care home but a political home\": How feminist activism influences women's aging.","authors":"Anne E Barrett, Brianna Soulie, Hope Mimbs, Avery Solis","doi":"10.1080/08952841.2026.2640343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08952841.2026.2640343","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A central mantra of aging centers on staying socially engaged - a prescription supported by numerous studies reporting how social engagement enhances well-being in later life. Research in this area has primarily focused on interaction with family and friends, paid work, and unpaid activities such as volunteering, while devoting less attention to involvement in organizations with explicitly political goals. Political engagement - particularly activism oriented toward social change - may not only shape communities but also transform how individuals experience and understand their own aging. This transformative potential may be especially significant for women, who are often devalued as they age beyond youth. To explore this possibility, we draw on nine semi-structured interviews with members of the Older Feminist Network (OFN), an organization established in 1982 in the United Kingdom in response to the mainstream feminist movement's limited attention to older women's issues. Consistent with prior studies of other women-centered organizations, we found evidence that involvement in OFN provided social interaction, as well as physical and cognitive activity, that can enrich well-being in later life. Our analyses, however, revealed that its impact extended beyond social connection: It fostered a sense of purpose through shared political commitments and reframed aging through feminist consciousness. By turning the focus from social to political engagement in later life, our study reveals how activism can provide women with an empowering perspective on aging.</p>","PeriodicalId":47001,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Women & Aging","volume":" ","pages":"1-12"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147357035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Journal of Women & AgingPub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2026-01-28DOI: 10.1080/08952841.2026.2622657
Alice O'Grady
{"title":"Sequins, satin, feathers and fur - collaborative costume and the ageing burlesque body.","authors":"Alice O'Grady","doi":"10.1080/08952841.2026.2622657","DOIUrl":"10.1080/08952841.2026.2622657","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article explores the efficacy of costume within the context of new or neo-burlesque performance and examines what costume 'does' on stage for older performers. It brings together scholarship on burlesque performance and female ageing and introduces a third theoretical dimension, that of critical costume. The article investigates the role costume plays in burlesque performances and the extent to which it partners with the bodies of older performers both during the creative process and on stage. Adopting object-oriented storytelling as methodology, interviews with professional and semi-professional performers reveal how the aesthetic, technical and material qualities of burlesque costumes act as a vehicle for the performance of pleasure and provide a platform for flamboyant aging. By examining the materiality and performative potential of burlesque costumes, this article offers insights into the transformative power of costume in the context of creative ageing and wellbeing. Drawing on testimony from performers, burlesque costuming is conceptualised as an active collaborator which is capable of producing alternative narratives around the representation of ageing, female bodies.</p>","PeriodicalId":47001,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Women & Aging","volume":" ","pages":"63-77"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146067561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Journal of Women & AgingPub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2026-01-19DOI: 10.1080/08952841.2026.2615470
Senjooti Roy, Georgina Veitch, Liat Ayalon
{"title":"\"They say that my years for dying are due, and I should just die\": Gendered ageism in healthcare access in Africa.","authors":"Senjooti Roy, Georgina Veitch, Liat Ayalon","doi":"10.1080/08952841.2026.2615470","DOIUrl":"10.1080/08952841.2026.2615470","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Gendered ageism refers to discrimination and bias arising from the intersection of age and gender. It leads to the devaluation and mistreatment of older women and may disproportionately impact multiple aspects of their lives. In this study, we explore the effects of gendered ageism on older women's access to healthcare in three African countries. Eighteen women aged 54-85 years were interviewed for this study. Thematic analysis was conducted to explore older women's experiences with healthcare facilities and health staff. Three sub-themes were identified: 1) structural and systemic issues that cause delay or denial of healthcare, 2) lack of person-centered care and disrespectful attitudes of healthcare workers, and 3) perceived control over healthcare decision-making. These sub-themes explore barriers to healthcare at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of interactions with healthcare systems. Gendered ageism may compromise older women's right to health, life, dignity, autonomy, and independence. It may deny older women access to timely and quality healthcare, jeopardizing their lives and limiting their prospects for healthy ageing. Recognition of the wide prevalence of gendered ageism and its impacts are essential for the formulation of health policies aimed at protecting older women from bias and discrimination within healthcare systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":47001,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Women & Aging","volume":" ","pages":"49-62"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145999385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Food itineraries and gender inequalities in Spain: Managing meals among older people in times of crisis.","authors":"Mabel Gracia-Arnaiz, Thalita Kalix Garcia, Montserrat Garcia-Oliva","doi":"10.1080/08952841.2026.2640525","DOIUrl":"10.1080/08952841.2026.2640525","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study examines the ways in which older people in Spain manage their daily meals, considering gender differences and the impact of increasing precarization. The main objective is to shed light on whether these two issues are at the root of certain forms of food insecurity among people with fewer resources, particularly women. We show that tasks related to the provision, preparation, distribution, and consumption of food foster both interactions and gender asymmetries, and although these may change over time depending on life circumstances, they are adopted by people according to the norms and expectations regarding the sexual division of labor and the assignment of responsibilities. We conclude that in contexts of precarization, having been or being the person responsible for family food provision places women and men in an unequal position in terms of access to sufficient and healthy food.</p>","PeriodicalId":47001,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Women & Aging","volume":" ","pages":"78-93"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147436582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Journal of Women & AgingPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-12-04DOI: 10.1080/08952841.2025.2597184
Nana Zheng, Chang Li, Shuqi Ye, Dan Xue, Jinping Zhang
{"title":"The dilemmas of maternal practices and care strategies for middle-aged and older women under China's delayed retirement policy.","authors":"Nana Zheng, Chang Li, Shuqi Ye, Dan Xue, Jinping Zhang","doi":"10.1080/08952841.2025.2597184","DOIUrl":"10.1080/08952841.2025.2597184","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As population aging intensifies and low birth rates persist, the growing burden of pension expenditures has formed an important background for China's implementation of a gradual delayed retirement policy. However, within the traditional gender division of labor in China, middle-aged and older women often bear dual maternal responsibilities-supporting adult children and caring for grandchildren. This study adopts in-depth interviews and participatory observation to engage 11 middle-aged and older women in Xianlin Sub-district, Qixia District, Nanjing. It analyzes their role conflicts under the dual pressures of work and family, and explores the influence of labor systems, gender norms, and welfare institutions. The study finds that although delayed retirement can increase their family income, maintain social networks, and improve their \"empty nest\" living situation, they still face challenges such as dual labor, time poverty under labor systems, exclusion from modern parenting discourses, and physical and mental exhaustion due to dual maternal roles, under the constraints of multiple social structures. These maternal practices reflect the struggles of middle-aged and older women within structural dilemmas arising from family gender role expectations, the lack of social policies and protections, internalized traditional cultural notions, and insufficient social support. Therefore, it is urgently needed to optimize social policies, promote the construction of harmonious family values, implement community-based childcare mutual assistance, and adjust family roles as care strategies to help middle-aged and older women reposition their roles within multiple social structures and reshape maternal spaces.</p>","PeriodicalId":47001,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Women & Aging","volume":" ","pages":"1-18"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145670284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}