This exploratory study provides an analysis of midlife professional women’s experiences of growing older at work. The master narrative of aging as decline encourages midlife women to experience and articulate growing older in terms of loss, isolation, and diminished material resources. Yet women do not simply reproduce the decline narrative, they also offer resistant stories. Analysis of women’s narratives suggests that increasingly, midlife is represented as a feature of one’s identity to be managed effectively. Specifically, entrepreneurialism has colonized the aging process such that the individual is now positioned as the locus of her own problems and solutions in relation to the seemingly inevitable decline that begins at midlife. In contrast, this analysis attempts to make explicit the economic, organizational, and discursive bases of aging. Finally, the article brings the politics of midlife professional women’s aging to the fore, highlights implications for theory and practice, and suggests directions for future research.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Anzaldúa, G. (Ed.). (1990). Making face, making soul/haciendo caras: Creative and critical perspectives by feminists of color. San Francisco: Aunt Lute.
2.
Asch, A. , & Fine, M. (1992). Beyond the pedestals: Revisiting the lives of women with disabilities. In M. Fine (Ed.), Disruptive voices: The possibilities of feminist research (pp. 139-174). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
3.
Ashcraft, K. L. (2000). Empowering ‘professional’ relationships: Organizational communication meets feminist practice. Management Communication Quarterly, 13, 347-392.
4.
Bell, E. , & Forbes, L. C. (1994). Office folklore in the academic paperwork empire: The interstitial space of gendered (con)texts. Text and Performance Quarterly, 14, 181-196.
5.
Brewis, J. , Hampton, M. P., & Linstead, S. (1997). Unpacking Priscilla: Subjectivity and identity in the organization of gendered appearance. Human Relations, 50, 1275-1304.
6.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex. ”New York: Routledge.
7.
Butler, S. , & Weatherly, R. A. (1992). Poor women at midlife and categories of neglect. Social Work, 37, 510-515.
8.
Cannon, L. W. , Higginbotham, E., & Leung, M. L. A. (1992). Race and class bias in qualitative research on women. In M. M. Fonow & J. A. Cook (Eds.), Beyond methodology: Feminist scholarship as lived research (pp. 107-118). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
9.
Cirksena, K. , & Cuklanz, L. (1992). Male is to female as _____ is to _____: A guided tour of five feminist frameworks for communication studies. In L. F. Rakow (Ed.), Women making meaning (pp. 18-44). New York: Routledge.
10.
Cockburn, C. (1991). In the way of women: Men’s resistance to sex equality in organizations. Ithaca, NY: ILR.
11.
Cole, E. , & Rothblum, E. (1990). Commentary on ‘sexuality and the midlife woman. ’Psychology of Women Quarterly, 14, 509-512.
12.
Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge.
13.
Conrad, C. (1994). Strategic organizational communication (3rd ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace.
14.
Corey, F. (1998). The personal: Against the master narrative. In. S. J. Dailey (Ed.), The future of performance studies: Visions and revisions (pp. 249-253). Annandale, VA: National Communication Association.
15.
Crawshaw-Lewis, S. (1996). ‘Overpaid’ older workers and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Washington Law Review, 71, 769-796.
16.
Davies, S. (1993). Feminist visions: Images of aging—Aging of images. Feminist Collections, 14, 9-12.
17.
Davis, A. (1981). Women, race and class. New York: Random House.
18.
Deetz, S. (1998). Discursive formations, strategized subordination and self-surveillance. In A. McKinlay & K. Starken (Eds.), Foucault, management, and organization theory (pp. 151-172). London: Sage.
19.
Dellinger, K. , & Williams, C. L. (1997). Makeup at work: Negotiating appearance rules in the workplace. Gender and Society, 11, 151-177.
20.
Dinnerstein, M. , & Weitz, R. (1994). Jane Fonda, Barbara Bush and other aging bodies: Femininity and the limits of resistance. Feminist Issues, 14, 3-24.
21.
du Gay, P. (1996). Consumption and identity. London: Sage.
22.
du Gay, P. (Ed.). (1997). The production of culture/cultures of production. London: Sage.
23.
Fine, M. G. , & Buzzanell, P. M. (2000). Walking the high wire: Leadership theorizing, daily acts and tensions. In P. M. Buzzanell (Ed.), Rethinking organizational and managerial communication from feminist perspectives (pp. 128-156). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
24.
Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Vintage.
25.
Frankenberg, R. (1993). White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
26.
Ginsberg, E. K. (1996). Passing and the fictions of identity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
27.
Grimes, D. S. (2000). Essentialism and difference in community building. Electronic Journal of Radical Organizational Theory, 6, 1-12.
28.
Gullette, M. M. (1997). Declining to decline: Cultural combat and the politics of midlife. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
29.
Houston, M. (1992). The politics of difference: Race, class, and women’s communication. In L. Rakow (Ed.), Women making meaning (pp. 45-59). New York: Routledge.
30.
Jardine, A. (1993). The demise of experience: Fiction as stranger than truth? In T. Docherty (Ed.), Postmodernism: A reader (pp. 433-442). New York: Columbia University Press.
31.
Kanter, R. M. (1977) Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books.
32.
Kanuha, V. K. (1999). The social process of “passing” to manage stigma: Acts of internalized oppression or acts of resistance?Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 26, 27-46.
33.
Kauffman, B. J. (1992). Feminist facts: Interview strategies and political subjects in ethnography. Communication Theory, 2, 187-206.
34.
Kincheloe, J. L. , & McLaren, P. (2000). Rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 279-314). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
35.
Kvale, S. (1996). Inter Views. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Leiblum, S. R. (1990). Sexuality and the midlife women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 14, 495-508.
38.
Lewis, R. (1994, February). Test finds age bias in hiring. AARP Bulletin, 35, 1-1.
39.
Lofgren, E. (1999). Workforce management is new discipline for the future. Compensation and Benefits Management, 15, 13-18.
40.
MacLoed, A. E. (1992). Hegemonic relations and gender resistance: The new veiling as accommodating protest in Cairo. Signs, 17, 533-557.
41.
Martin, J. N. , & Nakayama, T. K. (1999). Thinking dialectically about culture and communication. Communication Theory, 9, 1-25.
42.
McGregor, D. (1957). The human side of enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill.
43.
McQuaide, S. (1998). Women at midlife. Social Work, 43, 21-31.
44.
Miller, P. , & Rose, N. (1990). Governing economic life. Economy & Society, 19, 1-31.
45.
Morris, M. (1998). My brilliant career: It isn’t only love that’s sweeter the second time around. More, 1, 80-84.
46.
Mumby, D. K. (1997). The problem of hegemony: Rereading Gramsci for organizational communication studies. Western Journal of Communication, 61, 343-375.
47.
Murphy, A. G. (1998). Hidden transcripts of flight attendant resistance. Management Communication Quarterly, 11, 499-535.
48.
Nadesan, M. H. , & Trethewey, A. (2000). Crafting the enterprising subject: Gendered strategies of success (?). Text and Performance Quarterly, 20, 1-28.
49.
Nakayama, T. K. , & Krizek, R. L. (1995). Whiteness: A strategic rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 81, 291-301.
50.
Oakley, A. (1981). Interviewing women: A contradiction in terms. In H. Roberts (Ed.), Doing feminist research (pp. 30-61). London: Routledge Kegan Paul.
51.
Rowe, J. W. , & Kahn, R. L. (1998). Successful aging. New York: Pantheon.
52.
Rubin, L. , & Numeroff, C. (in press). Feminism’s third wave: Surfing to oblivion?Women & Therapy.
53.
Scott, J. W. (1992). “Experience. ” In J. Butler & J. W. Scott (Eds.), Feminists theorize the political (pp. 23-40). New York: Routledge.
54.
Spivak, G. C. (Ed.). (1988). In other worlds: Essays in cultural politics. London: Routledge.
55.
Spradlin, A. L. (1998). The price of “passing. ”Management Communication Quarterly, 11, 598-605.
56.
Strauss, A. , & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
57.
Stuller, J. (2000, July). Ready for the other millennium bomb?Chief Executive, 48-54.
58.
Tavris, C. (1992). The mismeasure of women. New York: Simon & Schuster.
59.
Taylor, B. C. , & Trujillo, N. (2000). Qualitative research methods. In L. Putnam & F. Jablin (Ed.), The new handbook of organizational communication (pp. 161-194). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
60.
Trethewey, A. (1997). Resistance, identity, and empowerment: A postmodern feminist analysis of a human service organization. Communication Monographs, 64, 281-301.
61.
Trethewey, A. (1999a). Disciplined bodies: Women’s embodied identities at work. Organization Studies, 20, 423-450.
62.
Trethewey, A. (1999b). Isn’t it ironic: Using irony to explore the contradictions of organizational life. Western Journal of Communication, 63, 140-167.
