Work, retirement and women in later life

Research on the labour market experiences of mid-life and older women is increasing, revealing new knowledge, but also showing us how much is not yet known. Retirement remains, for the most part, a presumed life transition for men, but not necessarily for women. Despite the growing, but still small number of studies that focus on women's retirement, most studies of retirement include only men, although some do include women, and others focus on women specifically. At the same time that interest is growing in women's retirement, changes are occurring which impact on the context of retirement and women. Demographic shifts have meant that the labour force is aging, that the baby boom generation is entering mid-life, and that the life course of women (and men too) has been altered substantially. Also, economic change in Canada (and throughout the industrial world) has meant that employment, unemployment, and retirement may no longer mean what they were taken to mean in the past. Guillemard and Rein suggest that "The social meaning of retirement is coming undone". And labour force withdrawals may not be as linked to chronological age as they were once presumed to be. The concept of material and family security has shifted, too, with family changes, increased labour force participation of women, cutbacks to and abandonment of social programs by provinces and the federal government, and changes in family income. This chapter focuses on changes in work and retirement among mid-life Canadians, with particular attention to women. Specifically, the interest here is in situating the experiences of a sample of recently non-working mid-life Canadians in the context of the profound macrolevel changes occurring in work and in the Canadian economy.