The influence of gender and class on the transition to retirement: A longitudinal qualitative study on Italian older workers’ experiences

Abstract

The aim of this study is the reconstruction of the multifaceted points of view related to the transition from work to retirement using a gender perspective. This article includes 40 interviews of ageing Italian workers, 24 women and 16 men, carried out in the cusp of retirement (wave 1) and two years after retirement (wave 3). The experiences related to the ‘decision to retire’ and ‘life after retirement’ were analysed using a complex theoretical framework based on the work of Bourdieu combined with the concept of gendered habitus developed by feminists’ theorizations. The findings identified the elements characterizing women’s narratives in such a way that it was possible to describe the ambivalent women’s positions embedded in the Italian socio-economic context. The voices of the participants were taken as case examples to draw attention to the critical nature of personal gendered identities, which are mostly influenced by structural conditions related to a particular welfare regime (e.g. work and retirement policies) aiming to fix normative behaviours in later life. Nevertheless, the gendered habitus, as an expression of inner discourses, illustrates at the same time the nature of both constraints and freedom possessed by the respondents. We conclude by pointing out the importance of reflexive social approaches applied to the study of gender inequalities in later life.

Keywords

Bourdieu’s social theory gender habitus older workers retirement plans retirement transition

Introduction

This longitudinal study carried out in Italy brings attention to the transitioning phase from work to retirement, offering a qualitative exploration aimed to investigate how specific gendered pathways influence both the decision to retire and the transitioning phase. Thus, the study proposes the following research questions: to what extent do an individual’s dispositions display a gendered pattern in the experience of retirement transition? To what extent do the subject’s dispositions influence the gendered experience of ‘becoming a retiree’? Do these dispositions change during the time of this study?

Following those questions, the narratives of respondents are analysed, paying attention to the lived experiences that differentiate ageing men and women, and why they want to retire (Biggs, 2001; Katz, 2013). Moreover, we point out how the intersection of structural gender inequalities impacts the retirement pathways, creating a differential transition from work to pension. The use of the Bourdieusian key theoretical concepts (1984, 1986) such as cultural, social and economic capitals help to explain both how structural elements create gendered taxonomies (e.g. care responsibilities) and, concerning the latter, how negative or positive feelings are dependent on the subject’s dispositions and moral stances. The crystallization of gender performativity (e.g. gender divisions of roles within the family) in a continuum affecting life after retirement has been highlighted, suggesting a specific cultural and social trend. Thus, women’s narratives highlighted how structural mechanisms of unequal distribution of power between gender roles contribute to maximizing the vulnerability of women to the precariousness of life.

Theoretical background

Some scholars (Slevin & Wingrove, 1995; Taylor et al., 2021; Zanasi & Sieben, 2020) pointed out how gerontological literature studying women’s attitudes toward retirement lacks theoretical grounds, and is mainly left unstated by researchers. In contrast with this, women’s perspectives are conceptualized in this study by using the theoretical framework related to gendered habitus (McNay, 1999), extending Bourdieu’s work on habitus and capitals (Bourdieu, 1984, 1986, 1989; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Further, in the literature, women’s decision to retire is conceptualized mainly as an empirical ‘variable for testing hypothesis’ (Duberley et al., 2014; Slevin & Wingrove, 1995; Taylor et al., 2021) and it is contextualized in terms of labour market participation or division of roles within the household (Bertolini et al., 2015), giving little scientific attention to the pension as a system of rationalized practices, and displaying a logic of power based on normative roles and performative gendered identities (Butler, 1986, 2004; Crenshaw, 1990; Foucault, 2003; hooks, 2003). In this regard, we direct our attention to ageing women performing the bulk of caring tasks with a consequent impact on both their labour market participation (Eurostat, 2018, 2020a) and orientation towards family roles (Da Roit et al., 2015; Saraceno, 2018).

The Italian welfare regime (Arts & Gelissen, 2002; Esping-Andersen, 1990; Ferrera, 1996, 2010; Pau Marí-Klose & Moreno-Fuentes, 2013) makes a strong case for using kinship relationship, relying on women in their functions of ‘wives’, ‘mothers’, other than ‘workers’, institutionalizing a (un)supported familism (Colombo et al., 2011; European Commission, 2018; Ferrera, 1996, 2010; Saraceno, 2010; Schmid et al., 2011). The inadequate supply of in-kind services for children, intertwined with the lack of coordination among the different articulations (regional, national) of the State (Di Matteo et al., 2020), has an impact on older people’s social participation in terms of care of children and grandchildren (Principi & Lamura, 2019; Principi et al., 2014). Moreover, the lack of services in the area of long-term care (Lamura et al., 2017) produces a culturally driven expectation of older people, who have to fulfil informal caregiving tasks. These expectations concerning Italian older women are supported by the ambivalent treatment reserved for them by the national social security system. In fact, the latter, on the one hand, has the goal of giving favourable treatment to women in terms of age requirements, by recognizing their role as informal caregivers within the family (Saraceno, 2018) but, on the other hand, this does not correspond to favourable economic treatment of women who choose to retire (early) because of caring tasks (Trifiletti, 1999). As an example, we can recall the so-called ‘woman’s option’ (Cinelli, 2020) targeting women leaving the labour market to take care of relatives, which meant for the female pensioners having to forego between 25% and 40% of their pension benefits (Saraceno, 2018). In other words, the cultural and social capital (Bourdieu, 1984, 1986) represented by the role of informal caregivers cannot be exchanged for economic capital, this having substantial implications for the devaluation of women’s work as well as for the reproduction of gender inequalities (Censis, 2019a). All the above elements shape life’s trajectory, impacting the ageing person facing the retirement decision-making process (Guichard-Claudic et al., 2001). Indeed, the end of one’s working life entails a process of transformation/reorganization of one’s personal identity without the work component, and of reframing family and social roles due to the absence of professional activities. In this regard, following the literature on the reconstruction of individual identities outside the occupational one (Guichard-Claudic et al., 2001; Taylor et al., 2021; Zanassi & Siebe, 2020), this study dedicates special attention to the role played by gender identities in the process of ‘becoming a retiree’.

Method

This article analyses semi-structured interviews collected during an international longitudinal study between May 2014 and July 2017 in the UK, the US and Italy. The original purpose of this study was to explore the retirement transition plans of older people within the sample (Principi et al., 2018, 2020). The Italian sub-sample (Table 1) included 40 individuals (24 women and 16 men) recruited using a purposive sampling technique. All the participants were interviewed three times: in the cusp of retirement (wave 1), one year after retirement (wave 2), and two years after retirement (wave 3). A total of 120 interviews were carried out, following a semi-structured topic guide interview aimed to explore changes in occupational positions, retirement plans and aspirations, family and environmental circumstances, health, social activity and lifestyles (Principi et al., 2018, 2020).

Table 1.

Sample characteristics.

Participants’ characteristicsN = 40	Gender
Participants’ characteristicsN = 40	Female (n = 24)	Male (n = 16)
Age	Range: 57–66 Mean: 60.5 SD: 2.79	Range: 52–65 Mean: 60.2 SD: 3.26
Work category	Heavy manual work: 2 Physical work: 9 Sedentary work: 8 Standing job: 5	Heavy manual work: 4 Physical work: 4 Sedentary work: 4 Standing job: 4
Income group (referring to the annual income)	Level 1 (up to €18,000): 3 Level 2 (from €18,001 to €24,000): 7 Level 3 (from €24,001 to €30,000): 6 Level 4 (from €30,001 to €36,000): 2 Level 5 (over €36,000): 4 Missing: 2	Level 1 (up to €18,000): 1 Level 2 (from €18,001 to €24,000): 2 Level 3: (from €24,001 to €30,000): 4 Level 4: (from €30,001 to €36,000): 4 Level 5 (over €36,000): 4 Missing: 1
Marital status	Couple: 16 Single: 8, of whom - Divorced: 1 - Widow: 4	Couple: 14 Single: 2, of whom - Separated: 1
Educational level following the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 1997	Level 1 - Primary education: 3 Level 2 - Lower secondary or second stage of basic education: 7 Level 3 - (Upper) secondary education: 8 Level 4 - Post-secondary non-tertiary education: 1 Level 5 - First stage of tertiary education: 4 Level 6 - Second stage of tertiary education: 1	Level 1 - Primary education: 0 Level 2 - Lower secondary or second stage of basic education: 7 Level 3 - (Upper) secondary education: 8 Level 4 - Post-secondary non-tertiary education: 0 Level 5 - First stage of tertiary education: 0 Level 6 - Second stage of tertiary education: 1

The authors selected the interviews from the first wave (W1, 2014) to explore the initial plans and meanings given to retirement, and from the third wave (W3, 2016) to analyse the lived experiences of ageing men and women two years after the transitioning phase. This longitudinal approach allowed to explore the process of retirement in a deeper and more dynamic perspective and to describe the directions of meanings and plans related to retirement, by highlighting any changes that may have occurred over the time of the study (Saldaña, 2003). This approach allowed to track changes in respondents’ points of view and to detect developments or changes related to the influence of social structure. Interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed, and anonymized. Qualitative analysis was carried out using MAXQDA2020. To analyse the content of the interviews, a coding process was set up (Table 2), and an open-coding strategy was adopted (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005; Strauss & Corbin, 1998).

Table 2.

The coding system.

Individual positioning within the professional structure	Individual decision/ motivation to retire	Gender division of unpaid work within the family	Continuum work/retirement	Family changes
Feelings of being powerless	Decisions related to age/seniority requirements	Caring tasks	Individual perceptions on economic changes: - Positive - Ambivalent - Negative	Increasing travel
System has the power	Social pressure	Cleaning	Individual perceptions on social and cultural changes: - Positive - Negative/Ambivalent	Household re-composition
Tensions within the system	Individual agency	Cooking		Health problems of relatives
Regulated liberties	Regain control over the time	Groceries		Caring for children/grandchildren
Power over the daily practices		Externalization of housekeeping tasks		Increasing sport, love/social life
Power positions within the system		Equal divisions of responsibilities
		Female partner with housekeeping tasks

Following this coding strategy, codes referring to the same phenomenon were grouped into subthemes, and these were then grouped into higher-order themes. In the analytical process, these themes were organized into categories (codes), sub-categories (sub-codes, Table 2), explained in the results section. At the end of the coding process, a framework matrix was used to seek out patterns, and crosstabs were created for crossing gender, income and quotations related to each code, comparing codes and their frequencies. An interactive matrix of coded quotations was created (Ritchie, 2013) in order to analyse gender and income differences among respondents.

All codes (see Table 2) have been visualized using a bar chart describing the number of quotations per single sub-code to clarify differences reported among the interviewees.

Results

The structure of inequalities at the intersection of age, gender and class

In this section, we will focus on the first code identified in Table 2, individual positioning within the professional structure, in which are grouped negative and positive feelings concerning the job position of respondents, and therefore their willingness to retire. The negative dimension, represented by feelings of being powerless, tensions lived within the system, and the description of situations in which the system has the power, clearly belongs to women’s storytelling. On the contrary, the positive dimension related to situations in which the individual feels in power over certain regulated actions (regulated liberties), as well as perceptions of being in power over their daily practices and being in a power position within the system at large, are expressed more often by the men in the sample. Figure 1 helps to quantitatively visualize these gender differentiations.

Figure 1.

Individuals’ positioning within the professional structure.

To analyse the quotations, a matrix crossing the gender and income of the study participants was created. The data suggested that blue-collar men are in a subordinate work position just as blue-collar women. The individual positioning originates feelings of being powerless within the system, which in turn increased their willingness to retire. However, the unequal distribution of power is somehow more tolerable for male respondents because it is compensated with a good salary level (economic capital):

I am not passionate; I just see a piece of wood on a machine in front of me. I can’t even feel the satisfaction of looking at the final product because the only thing I can see [all day] is that piece of wood. [. . .] The only thing I like is the salary though, here for the rest [. . .] the owner of the factory looks at us all day meanwhile we work; he only wants to control us, and this is really annoying, but he is the owner, so [. . .]. (W1, ID 27, Male, Age 59, Income group 4, Heavy manual work, in a Couple, ISCED 2)

On the contrary, considering the narratives of female blue-collars, there emerged a different form of symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1989), in which the prevalent element of gender differences involves the social and cultural subordination on the top of an economic differentiation:

I also worked 8–9 hours per day, making 1,200 pairs of shoes per day [. . .] My work was so hard that my hands were permanently damaged. [After a while] I couldn’t work anymore, and I always spoke to my superior. [. . .] I was unfortunate because I liked doing that job and I was becoming an expert in the field, but although all my health problems, the superior did not transfer me to another work position until one day the occupational doctor came into the factory and recommended to switch my work position [. . .] . At that point, the factory owner came to me saying: ‘ah, and now where can I transfer you? Tell me. . . because you know that the manual work is required everywhere here, only in the Church you can pray with your hands without physical efforts’. (W1, ID 13, Female, Age 57, Income group 1, Physical work, just Separated from her husband, ISCED 1)

The quotation above describes the relations between a male director of a factory and the female worker’s subordinate position in the professional structure. In her narrative is reported a scene in which the male director used the reference to the Church as a negative judgement about her workability because she is female. Indeed, the image of a devout, religious woman is still recurrent in the most conservative Italian discourses, representing women as inclined to obey the laws of God (e.g. nuns) and not equipped with individual willpower.

Other female participants confirmed the negative feelings produced by the unequal gendered distribution of power. For instance, one interviewed woman, employed in a factory producing printed circuit boards dealing with galvanic processing, was leading a specific production unit. She liked her occupation. Although her level of education was not high, over time, she specialized in computer technology, acquiring specific work competencies. She perceived her salary as good and her tasks as very important for the work process’s success. However, the tensions within the system are constantly present in her narrative:

. . . [my occupation] it is stressful because every piece we made must conform to specific qualitative and quantitative indicators; if the initial work planning is wrong, the piece will be defective. Thus, my job is physically heavy and mentally demanding because the level of attention is always high. [. . .] what I like the most is the satisfaction I feel when we succeed in the production [of printed panels]. However, the pride I feel for my job is not recognized because nobody of those above me ever recognized it. Indeed, that’s what I like the least, the superiors [in the occupational hierarchy] have an attitude [that is] not always sympathetic. (W1, ID 31, Female, Age 57, Income group 4, Heavy manual work, in a Couple, ISCED 2)

In sum, despite the ability of some female blue-collar respondents to use different forms of capital, which entitled them to gain power and status, the lowest common denominator in women’s narratives is the insufficient social recognition. Scaling up the economic capital of the sample, within the codes system has the power and tensions within the system, we find white-collars experiencing feelings of dissatisfaction and burden when lacking social and cultural capital.

In the quotation below, a male respondent pointed out his educational level and social class as central elements of dissatisfaction:

No [my work was different in the past]. In the last 20 years, I carried out an administrative job [HR management]. Before that, when I started to work 40 years ago [in the same office], I worked in the building construction unit. Although I had no proper [academic] title, I worked in the construction sites with the engineers for 20 years. I worked as a project manager and as a project designer. Then, 20 years ago, new technicians were hired, and I was kicked out [from my job position] because I did not have the academic title to carry out the functions of a technician, and I was transferred [to do administrative work].

I was one of the first to learn how to use a laptop, and I learned it myself. I paid for a training course at my expense. And the [administrative] routine is very dull, and I start to work less, and I got bored. Then, in the last year, I could not develop some projects that I care about because of a lack of funding. But in 15 days I will be retiree, so. . . [I am careless]. (W1, ID 11, Male, Age 64, Income group 1, Sedentary work, Divorced and in a new Couple, ISCED 3)

The negative feelings about his educational level (cultural capital), the dissatisfaction with his current job position (economic capital) intertwined with the anger he felt at the arrival of new younger technicians. Nevertheless, when we look at female respondents, the tension within the system is not only influenced by categories such as age and class, but the gendered role of caring tasks also affected the individual job position:

I started to work when I was 16, and I worked and studied at the same time for several years. . . And I started [to work] with the ancestor of the laptop [. . .] I began to work for an international company of transportation where I was an IT consultant. Then, I got married, and I had the first child, and I started to have problems due to my working time because I was out also for 12–13 hours a day. One day, I went to the city hall office, and I saw a job offer there. They were looking for someone to enter administrative data, so the job level required low-level skills [it was a downgrading], but I did not care because the working time was from 8 am to 2 pm, and this meant that I had all free afternoons to dedicate to my child. [I applied for the job] because of the working hours, [otherwise] I was not really interested in that job.

And nowadays, I feel I am living a double injustice. . . for having worked and studied, for having done a crazy effort all my life, and then now I am penalized [referring to the last Italian pension reforms, which increased the statutory retirement age and reduced early retirement options]. It is not easy to accept for me. Now, they [the politicians] are telling me that I am young for the pension, but I work since I was 16, meanwhile, my daughter and her generation are studying until they are 25. (W1, ID 21, Female, Age 57, Income group 5, Sedentary work, in a Couple, ISCED 3)

The feeling of frustration related to the unequal gender distribution of roles within the family concurring to define the opportunities within the labour market, is clearly expressed by another female respondent:

Maybe in my life, I have been wrong, I shouldn’t have resigned from my job at the local industrial association because I earned a lot there, more than double a white-collar salary. But unfortunately, my mother thought [I should] stay at home and care for the children. In doing that, I could support the career of my husband, but I renounced mine. I have to tell you the truth [. . .], I was ok being at home. Then, my 10 year old son didn’t need me anymore and I started to think to go back to work. Nowadays, I have to retire with a pension of 1,150 euro per month. Instead, if I could have pursued my career, I would have retired with more than 3,000 euro a month. (W1, ID 10, Female, Age 65, Income group 5, Standing work, Divorced, ISCED 3)

This last quotation belongs to a woman working as a secretary in a public office who, reaching the pension age requirements, was obliged to retire by Italian law, despite, as she frequently pointed out, how much she loved her work.

In sum, despite the differences that could be found and interpreted in scaling up cultural capital (i.e. educational level, moral stance, self-care preferences) and social capital (i.e. family structure, relations to colleagues), there is a prevalent gendered habitus expressed towards two registers of communication: on the one hand, female respondents expressed their feelings of being de-valued or not recognized as a woman employee; on the other hand, women older workers expressed their struggles in maintaining a work–life balance, due to caring responsibilities and the gendered structural differences within the family.

Gendered differential pathways from work to retirement

The concept of gendered habitus has been used to explore a set of discursive beliefs, perceptions and meanings influencing the decision to retire for both men and women interviewed.

Figure 2 presents the main sub-codes (of the main code individual decision/motivation to retire) created while analysing the reasons given by individuals for their decision to retire. The nuanced lifeworld of the study participants cannot be reduced to standardized patterns, however, interviewees homogeneously pointed out their perception of deserving their pensions because they met the seniority requirements after a long professional career, and/or they were entering elderhood, structuring the imagination around the last phase of life, and the importance of regaining free time. Further, we identified the interactions between gendered roles and freedom/obligation to retire as structural elements concurring to create four pathways to retirement (Table 3).

Figure 2.

Individual decision/motivation to retire.

Table 3.

Interaction between freedom/obligation to retire and family/self-care.

	A) Family care	B) Self-care
1) Freedom of choice	Pathway 1A	Pathway 1B
2) Obligation to retire	Pathway 2A	Pathway 2B

Pathway 1A: Retirement as a free choice to regain time with family

Men substantiated their possibility/choice to retire and dedicate their free time to hobbies and being at home with their families. In the following quotation, the attitude towards the family is not felt as a moral duty or an imposed obligation, but as an important opportunity among others.

I have worked all my life. Before having a regular employment contract, I worked with my dad, when I was a child. I worked for 50 years, and now it is enough, I want to spend time with my family [. . .] and I will have more time for doing what I do already, which is gardening, but if I have time, I will do also other things, of course. I would like to spend time with my grandchildren, they are still little, and for example I would like to bring them to the beach in the summer or going out with them. (W1, ID 37, Male, Age 63, Heavy manual work, Income group not declared, in a Couple, ISCED 3)

The meaning represented by spending time with family members expressed a distinct gendered habitus when it comes to female respondents. Indeed, family has a symbolic power in relation to feelings of identity and belonging, and finally in certain discourses appears as the place to be for the subject’s self-realization, as shown in the quotation below:

[My work was not important for my personal identity] I have always respected my job, I liked what I was doing, and I have done my work with love and passion, but the family comes first [. . .] I have always placed the family first and my children as the first life-achievement. [I feel the desire to retire because] It has been always one of my goals because when you are 60 you are at a turning point, especially for a woman, who has the right to rest and enjoy the family and the grandchildren before she dies. [After retirement] I want to be with my children and my grandchildren at home. (W1, ID 26, Female, Age 59, Income group not declared, Physical work, in a Couple, ISCED 3)

This quotation is from a woman who played a managerial position in a cleaning enterprise, declaring that she could have remained at work with her company for other seven years. However, she felt the moral duty to devote time to her family. This decision to prioritize the family role impacted her professional career, as she reported having dropped out of work several times during her lifetime to care for her children. Finally, the decision to retire costs her a penalty in the amount of pension she would receive because she did not fulfil the normative seniority requirements. Nevertheless, she decided to retire because she prioritized the family and her role in it. This seems a free choice driven by personal beliefs and values.

Pathway 1B: Freedom of choice related to regaining time for self-care

Some male participants pointed out a specific attitude underlying the decision to retire, showing a certain freedom of choice in reclaiming free time to devote to themselves as individuals and not as e.g. fathers, grandfathers, housekeepers, and highlighting their personal interests, as expressed by the following quotations:

The reason why I chose to retire is because I do not want to wake up anymore every morning at 6am or 7am, and I do not feel ok with that, but even more, I feel so happy at the idea of retiring [and sleeping more]. I am very positive when I look at my future as a retiree, although I did not really plan what I am going to do in my free time, I will see. . . I will not get bored for sure, I have many interests, like computers, or reading books. (W1, ID 1, Male, Age 57, Income group 4, Sedentary work, in Couple since W1, ISCED 2)

I chose to [early] retire because that option is very convenient [economically]. [My retirement] is an opportunity to finally dedicate my time to pursue my hobbies. (W1, ID 11, Male, Age 64, Income group 1, Sedentary work, Divorced and in a new Couple, ISCED 3)

In line with the attitude expressed by male respondents, some women also used the concept of time as an expression of a symbolic act of self-care, imagining living a meaningful later life, as described below:

I decided to retire because I think it is time for me to leave the phase of work. I have already planned to enrol at the University of the Third Age [. . .] in some courses, like English language courses, painting classes [. . .] . Then, I would like to visit my son in Australia. Me and my partner so far, we travelled [. . .] in India, in Africa. We have seen so many beautiful places and we would like to do so even in the future. (W1, ID 04, Female, Age 60, Income group 4, Sedentary work, Widow with a new partner for the last 17 years, ISCED 3)

Nevertheless, women’s narratives highlighted a stronger perceived feeling of exhaustion, experiencing their choice of retiring as a sort of marathon finishing line:

I am really tired. [. . .] I would like to dedicate some time for my-self after 42 years of work. I would like to have the time and take things slow. [. . .] Before my mother got sick, I was planning to do more social activities. But now, it has been already four years that I have been taking care of my mom, and I do not know yet for how long I will need to be her caregiver. And trust me, it is very very tiring to take care of sick people. So [when I will be a retiree] I absolutely want to rest and recharge my energy. (W1, ID 7, Female, Age 59, Income group 2, Sedentary work, Divorced since W1, ISCED 3)

Finally, female respondents pointed out how old age is perceived not only as time for self-care, but also as a way to separate or at least displace the self from the normative roles of worker, wife and (grand)mother, and from the social expectations that those roles imply:

[I decided to retire] First, we have to retire. . . sooner or later we have to. Then, because this [retirement] was one of my goals in life and I planned it for many years as well as I prepared myself for it. Because in my life I cannot be only a retiree, a housewife, a grandmother. I want to have other types of gratification in old age. (W1, ID 21, Female, Age 57, Income group 5, Sedentary work, in a Couple, ISCED 3)

Pathway 2A: Obligation to retire related to family tasks and responsibilities

In some cases, males of the sample had to leave the job market due to seniority requirements. The obligation coincides also with the ‘obligation’ to fulfil caring tasks within the family. As the quotation below exemplifies, although the male respondent has reached the seniority requirements for the pension, he clearly stated how his caring responsibilities affected the transition to retirement:

I clearly explained to my wife one thing: never interfere with my work. For me the work is sacred. And I could already be a retiree in 1999 having the minimum amount of pension. However, I am still here in 2014 at 65 years old [but it’s time to retire] because I want to go back to dance and to take care of my wife. My wife receives the disability pension and suffers from a severe disability, and I help her as much as I can, especially with the groceries, the laundry, carrying weights. We are married since 1975, almost 40 years of marriage. (W1, ID 15, Male, Age 65, Standing work, Income group 3, in a Couple, ISCED 2)

Other male respondents perceived their obligation to retire as having a positive impact on their family roles:

I think that once I am retired, I will have more time to dedicate to my family, to do some work at home, some gardening. . . my wife is still working so I will not be able to travel a lot more with her, but I am sure she will start to tell me ‘do this! do that!’ and my children will tell me to run some errands, or to look after their kids. . . I am sure that all of that will happen. (W1, ID 18, Male, Age 57, Standing work, Income group 2, in a Couple, ISCED 2)

If the obligation to retire among some male respondents was not only influenced by seniority requirements, but also by caring responsibilities for relatives or family tasks, when it comes to women’s narratives, there is an additional nuance related with the burden felt while carrying out caring tasks, as highlighted below:

I live with my mom and my dad, both are 89 years old, and with my auntie of 94 years old. They have many different pathologies but overall are ok, but they refuse to have professional caregivers at home [. . .] I have absolutely no help, they don’t want even a professional cleaner here. [I decided to retire because] it is very hard to reconcile family and work, which is the only reason that motivates my decision, but I like my work and feel good at work. (W1, ID 38, Female, Age 62, Sedentary work, Income group 5, Widowed, ISCED 5)

Women’s narratives pointed out how the caring responsibilities are an obligation on their own, with the additional feeling of burden concerning caring for older relatives and/or children/grandchildren. Thus, they tend to look at the time after retirement as a moment to fulfil only their gendered roles within the family, without experiencing the emotional and physical distress of reconciling family and work.

2B: Obligation to retire related to health problems and need for self-care

The experience of male workers approaching retirement may assume a different shape when it comes to self-care. In this regard, self-care here is not understood as hobbies, but rather as an obligation due to worries and feelings of anxiety related to physical conditions:

They asked me if I was available to remain at work a bit longer, for some other years, but. . . if I didn’t have physical problems in my feet, I would have stayed longer, at least I would have thought about it, but [. . .] I am not in a good shape anymore, I am not the person that I was. For 40 years I did not have any problems at all. But in the last 7–8 months this issue at my feet hit me, and I was shocked a lot, and still, I am not feeling ok with myself 100%. Now I am back to work, but I have to say that I live this physical accident [. . .] with a lot of anxiety. (W1, ID 19, Male, Age 61, Heavy manual work, Income group 5, in a Couple, ISCED 3)

Hence, women’s obligation to retire due to their perceived needs for self-care revealed a reality in which physical and mental health interplay with the twofold roles of housewife and worker within the social care sector, as depicted by the following quotation:

During the last years it was very difficult for me [to reconcile work and family tasks] also because I did at home the same tasks I had to carry out at work. It was a nightmare! But it was mentally demanding, because I had to clean repetitively both at home and at school. For this reason, I am telling you that my job makes me feel low-qualified and does not motivate my brainpower. I have reached 65 years old required for retirement, but I asked for a job prolongation because of economic reasons. But then I thought: ‘but for what?’, and I said to myself that I already have a husband at home receiving a pension, so also if I will receive little money, I’ll settle for it. (W1, ID 28, Female, Age 66, Income group 2, Physical work, in a Couple, ISCED 2)

The experience of older women respondents, and their psychological well-being, seems to be affected by the cultural, political and economic aspects of housewives’ traditional roles (Daly & Lewis, 2000; Keck & Saraceno, 2013; Saraceno, 2010), whose responsibilities are relegated to the private sphere of the family. In this regard, the code gender division of unpaid work within the family aims at better quantifying the provision of care and housekeeping’ activities provided by the men and women interviewed (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Gender division of unpaid work within the family.

Women carry out the housekeeping tasks such as cleaning (e.g. making beds, washing). Instead, the most quoted activity for men is getting groceries. In general, men referred to the housekeeping activities they carried out either as a form of help to the work of their female partners or as a hobby they do because they like it. Scaling up the cultural and economic capital, we found few individuals referring to having opted for an equal division of family responsibilities and tasks and/or they have externalized the family tasks to other (female) workers. Instead, the interviewed women constantly referred to the unpaid work they carried out within the family as a moral duty and a burden.

Caring responsibilities during life after retirement

To explore if and how respondents perceived a continuum or family changes within their gendered roles during life after retirement, we collected the experiences of individuals’ routines and lifestyles focusing on housekeeping and caring tasks, conceptualizing the latter such as ‘hardly a choice, but rather a means to fix identity’ (Katz, 2013, p. 33).

Previous studies, analysing the same dataset (Principi et al., 2018, 2020), pointed out how respondents declared to be overall satisfied with their life after retirement. Figure 4 shows the number of quotations expressing a positive perception of both economic and social changes experienced by respondents two years after retirement.

Figure 4.

Continuum work/retirement.

The main gendered differences, especially when it comes to economic changes, are given by the pension gender gap, since women respondents reported a significant loss of income and negative feelings because of it. Furthermore, the thematic analysis of the interviews carried out in wave 3 (i.e. two years after retirement) stressed the gendered experiences related to family tasks such as caring for children/grandchildren and health problems of relatives (Figure 5).

Figure 5.

Family changes.

Indeed, the caring demands for relatives or children/grandchildren extensively structured the narratives of women, as shown in the examples below:

I would say that I am working even more now [that I retired], because of my daughter that she got married, but she needs me more than before. Last December, she became self-employed, she decided to open a stationery shop, so now I have all weeks booked. I go help her at the stationery shop, although most of the time I go to my daughter’s house, and I clean up there. (W3, ID 35, Female, Age 57, Income group 2, Standing occupation, in Couple since W1, ISCED 2)

I often take care of my niece, at least twice a week, all day. Depends on my daughter, if she wants Tuesday and Thursday or other days. But during March and April, I had to take care of her every day. [Nowadays] I spend more time with my family, my mother and my niece keep me busy most of the day. This year I wanted to go to the gym in November. Unfortunately, my mom got sick with bronchopneumonia. After that, also my husband got sick. Now, I also got sick, having problems on my knee. (W3, ID 06, Female, Age 60, Income group 3, Sedentary occupation, in Couple since W1, ISCED 3)

[Nowadays, I can confirm] yes, I do not work anymore. But I do a lot of voluntary work if I can say so. I do volunteer activity at home with my mother daily. [I have free time] but as I said, I would have more free time if I did not have the caring tasks I have to carry out with my mother. But I do it with pleasure anyway; I would not do it differently because me and my mother are very close. (W 3, ID 07, Female, Age 59, Income group 2, Sedentary occupation, divorced since W1, ISCED 3)

What the narratives pointed out is the common positive feelings prevailing after retirement. Overall, the caring tasks are carried out mostly by older women retirees and the degree of frustration, burden or willingness and satisfaction shifts depending on personal motivation, moral stance and gendered identities. Nevertheless, the data highlighted the impact of the care gender gap within the family, which directly affects the women of our sample.

Discussion and conclusions

This qualitative longitudinal study explored the narratives of ageing Italian workers experiencing the retirement transition. By including the concept of gendered habitus, we revisit the neglected differences between women and men’s experiences of old age and the various decision-making processes leading to retirement, to restore the importance of narratives in interpreting gender differences.

Overall, some of the women and men interviewed expressed their positive feelings towards their jobs, their positive identification with their professional roles and their positive feelings of being retired, after reaching this new condition. However, male respondents seem to be relatively autonomous from their family roles (e.g. father, caregiver) when it comes to the retirement transition. For female respondents, instead, the autonomous individual choice was mostly informed by family tasks and caring responsibilities, as reported in their quotations.

Zooming out from the individual to the structural level, it is important to highlight the nodal points between individual agency and social structure influencing retirement. The small group of respondents is not sufficient to generalize the findings to the whole Italian (female) population. However, it is possible to link our findings with the gender division of roles within the Italian welfare system. The divisions of family roles described by this study might contribute to illustrate well how specific institutionalized practices, within the Mediterranean familistic welfare system, are internalized by the agents and embodied in an individual system of dispositions (Arts & Gelissen, 2002; Bourdieu, 1989; Bourdieu et al., 1999; Keck & Saraceno, 2013; Schmid et al., 2011).

Recently, the Italian Department of Equal Opportunity of the Presidency of Council of Ministers, in partnership with Censis (2019a, 2019b), developed a national project focused on the structural gender inequalities experienced by women within the Italian society, and a national report (Censis, 2019a) was published, reconstructing the different structural inequities impacting the education level and career outcomes of Italian women, the difficulties in their work–life balance, their positions in the household, and the gender pay gap, including the pension pay gap. Regarding the caring tasks within the family, it was confirmed that caring tasks are considered as feminine tasks by 97% of Italian women; 81% of women carry out housekeeping tasks compared to 20% of Italian men. Secondly, 63.5% of the Italian population (Censis, 2019a) agreed with the statement: ‘sometimes it is necessary/due for a woman to sacrifice her free time or her career to dedicate herself to the family’. Our study allowed to explore in depth how this was lived by the individuals in our sample. The Italian social security arrangements (Cinelli, 2020) do not compensate the precarious conditions of women’s professional careers (Eurostat, 2020a, 2020b), concurring with the reproduction of gender inequalities. Thus, respondents in our sample represented an advantaged group because they had succeeded in having a long-lasting career. However, we acknowledge that for women with lower cultural and social capitals, being part of the labour force is hardly a choice, given the so-called ‘informal care work’ reserved for them within the family and not recognized for retirement purposes (Saraceno, 2018). Further, our sample indicates at the micro-level the effects of this situation, pointing out how demanding it was for some women respondents to accomplish the caring roles both while working and after retirement, considering the lack/inadequate supply of social services (Keck & Saraceno, 2013; Lamura et al., 2017). Indeed, the Italian paternalistic cultural traits (Censis, 2019a), combined with the experiential space influenced by the concept of social care (Daly & Lewis, 2000), confirmed the ‘loving, thinking, doing’ process as an ethical, established female practice. This element helps us interpret the individual desire to retire for the ageing women of the sample, whose decisions seem less driven by economic reasons than for men. Despite the possibility to remain in the labour market and/or awareness of the fact that their pension would have been lower because their career paths were more fragmented compared to their male colleagues (Censis, 2019a, 2019b), the females of the sample felt a powerful desire to retire in order to carry out the demanding gendered roles of caring (morally driven), and/or to have more free time at their disposal because of the double pressure (work and family) they were exposed to during their lifetime. In conclusion, the critical analysis of women’s narratives attempted to open up a reflexive space, connecting individual women’s experiences with economic, political, social and cultural trends, and the related disadvantages.

Limitations

This qualitative study is based on a limited number of semi-structured interviews (40). Our aim was to deepen the meanings of retirement plans and experiences of a group of ageing Italian workers, by using a longitudinal design. Thus, the small sample of respondents and the qualitative approach of this study limited the generalization of the results. Further, the interpretative methodological elements constituting this study do not allow the development of a specific theoretical perspective or the validation of a particular theoretical hypothesis, but the authors’ orientation was to highlight the narrative contents expressed by the interviewees, interpreting them through the association to specific concepts and theories already existing (e.g. the theory of Bourdieu, extended by the gendered habitus conceptualized by McNay).

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the research participants who kindly gave up their time and shared their experiences and thoughts. The authors would also like to acknowledge Dr. Andrea Principi for his role of PI of the study in Italy.

Funding

This work was supported by the British Lifelong Health and Wellbeing Cross-Council Programme (LLHW). The LLHW Funding Partners for this award are the Economic and Social Research Council and the Medical Research Council (grant number ES/L002884/1). This study was also partially supported by Ricerca Corrente funding from the Italian Ministry of Health to IRCCS INRCA.

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