Bridging Critical Feminist Gerontology and Social Work to Interrogate the Narrative on Civic Engagement

The Emergence of Critical Gerontology

Biggs (2008) reflected on the historical emergence of critical gerontology in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the United States and United Kingdom as a mixture of social constructionism and 1960s radicalism, noting that the rise of critical gerontology drew “on neo-Marxist political economy, civil rights movements, and the insight, taken up most forcibly by political feminism, that the personal was now political” (p. 116). Contextually, critical gerontology came to the fore in time to see the concept of social reform change from its original liberal and progressive movement of the “dismantling of ancient prejudices and structural inequalities” (Biggs, 2008, p. 116) to its opposite of removing social protections and reestablishing power bases under the regimes of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The reconceptualization of reform created challenges for gerontology in that moral arguments combined with evidence of negative conditions no longer persuaded political elites to listen to aging activists (Biggs, 2008; Dannefer, Stein, Siders, & Patterson, 2008). New strategies were needed, and Moody (2008) contended that critical gerontology offered an alternative voice to a problems approach to aging.

Critical gerontology includes the contributions of feminism, but some scholars are quick to point out that aging has not been central to feminist theory (Neysmith & Reitsma-Street, 2009, p. 238). Ray (2008a) credited the philosopher, writer, and activist Simone de Beauvoir with inspiring critical gerontologists. de Beauvoir’s The Coming of Age (1972) challenged the reader to stop denying old age and to combine micro- and macro-analyses in fully recognizing that ageism must be overcome at both the individual and the societal levels. Ray (2008a, p. 97) observed that “those critical gerontologists who, like Simone de Beauvoir, are able to see the world from both the social and individual perspectives, and in whose work culture and biography intersect, are indeed a rarity.” Other activists who had an early impact on popular and academic audiences include Maggie Kuhn (1977), Barbara Macdonald and Cynthia Rich (1983), Doris Lessing (1983), May Sarton (1984), Betty Friedan (1993), and Eleanor Stoller and Rose Gibson (1994). “These works and many others have provided an excellent foundation for feminist gerontology, an area of inquiry that makes gender studies central to both the understanding of aging and the construction of gerontology as a field” (Ray, 1996, p. 674).

Critical gerontologists interrogate the underlying assumptions that form the paradigms, theories, models, and approaches that are used to conceptualize the studies and interventions in the field. Over the past two decades, a number of books have been written about critical gerontology (e.g., Baars, Dannefer, Phillipson, & Walker, 2006; Cole, Achenbaum, Jakobi, & Kastenbaum, 1993; Minkler & Estes, 1991) and feminist gerontology (e.g., Calasanti & Slevin, 2006; Walker, 1985). In 1991, Baars examined the challenges faced by critical gerontology, and in 1993, the Journal of Aging Studies published the first issue devoted to feminist approaches to aging studies (vol. 7, no. 2). In 1999, the Journal of Women and Aging published a special issue (vol. 11, no. 2–3) on feminist gerontology (Ray, 1999). Calasanti (2004b) edited an issue of the Journal of Aging Studies on new directions in feminist gerontology, and more recently for the same journal, Moody (2008) edited a special issue examining the maturing of critical gerontology. In these various collections, many of the same names appear, revealing a persistent commitment to critical feminist gerontology by a group of dedicated scholars (see, e.g., Calasanti, 2004a; Dannefer et al., 2008; Estes, 2004, 2008; Minkler & Holstein, 2008; Ray, 2003a, 2003b).

Calasanti (2004b) summarized a number of challenges in publishing research on feminist gerontology. Just because the words woman, man, and gender are used in studies does not mean that it is feminist research. Emphases on power relations and inequality, on how power influences male and female identities, and on gender as a dynamic structural force in the life chances of men and women frame feminist research. Without these emphases, studies that use gender as simply a demographic characteristic may be about men and women but are not feminist. “Overall, feminist frameworks ground little gerontological research; and some scholars seem to be avoiding the ‘f’ word even when their analyses are feminist” (Calasanti, 2004b, p. 2). In addition, Calasanti and Slevin (2006) recognized that feminist research is often marginalized, not appearing as often in mainstream journals: “Scholars and activists whose work focuses on aging and ageism have been ignored by the mainstream, including feminists” (p. 9).

Feminist Gerontologists in Social Work

Twenty-one years ago, in an editorial in Social Work, Ann Hartman (1990) declared that “aging is a feminist issue in social work.” The joining of forces of feminist social workers with colleagues in other disciplines and professions becomes even more essential when seductive policy narratives mask deeply embedded assumptions that are inattentive to age, gender, and race.

In 1992, Linsk, Keigher, Simon-Rusinowitz, and England teamed up to write Wages for Caring: Compensating Family Care of the Elderly. Sancier (1994) reviewed this impressive volume in Affilia with these words: “Wages for Caring is not a feminist book, but the information it presents and its analytical approach make it crystal clear why feminists need to pay more attention than they have in the past to charges that they ignore fiscal realities and the concerns of other legitimate constituencies …. Unless feminists understand and are prepared to confront the different stakes and the policy choices, they risk being left in the dust when the real decisions are made” (p. 90).

In 1995, social work educators Hooyman and Gonyea wrote Feminist Perspectives on Family Care: Policies of Gender Justice. In 2002, Hooyman, Browne, and Richardson (in the field of social work) teamed with Ray (whose field is English) to examine the policy, research, and teaching issues in feminist gerontology and the life course. Acknowledging that gerontologists who study aging and feminism have been concerned that older women have been neglected by both feminism and gerontology, they, too, were quick to point out that simply studying women is not the same as using feminist frameworks. They defined feminism “as a means to understand the advantages and disadvantages that follow gender throughout the life course, as well as the gendered nature of power and domination collectively rather than individually” (p. 5). They emphasized that racial, class, and age oppression cannot be separated from gender and that their definition is inclusive of men and women. “Feminist gerontology views gender as a relational construct that provides women and men with advantages and disadvantages throughout the life course. Feminists pursue a holistic view of people’s lives, emphasizing strengths, oppression, differences, and abilities; analyzing old age in a more inclusive manner; and advocating social change to reduce inequities” (p. 10).

Hooyman et al. (2002) explicated nine interconnected elements, each in its own section, that must be considered in critically analyzing policies from a feminist gerontological framework. These elements are inequality and oppression, diversity and aging, production and reproduction, separate spheres and familism, political and structural change, power and empowerment, holistic and ecological view, solidarity, and alternative methodology. This thought-provoking article, which critiques policies that are related to caregiving, work, and retirement, is an excellent resource for feminists who want to analyze policies through a gerontological lens.

A search of the Journal of Gerontological Social Work revealed four articles and two book reviews that referred to feminism. Frahm (2008) reviewed Immigrant Women Tell Their Stories (by Berger, 2004) in which feminist inquiry was used in conducting qualitative interviews with women who immigrated to the United States, Israel, Austria, and New Zealand. Jurkowski (2009, p. 565) reviewed Endnotes: An Intimate Look at the End of Life (by Ray, 2008b) in which a well-known feminist gerontologist used “feminist theory to illustrate many of the unspoken realities of institutional care and how these realities impact upon sexuality, intimacy, autonomy, and personal identity in one’s later years.” Although two of the four articles (Butler, 2009; Onolemhemhen, 2009) simply referred to feminism once each, citing social work feminists (Hartman, 1990; Hooyman & Gonyea, 1995), another (Hightower, Smith, & Hightower, 2006) used a feminist framework to explore the abuse of older women. However, it was Simpson’s (2008) article that elaborated on a womanist perspective and explored the intersectionality of how age, “gender, race, class, and access to resources shape … caregiving within a broad socio-historical-political context of gender and caregiving” (p. 23). Simpson focused on low-income African American grandmother-caregivers and the challenges they face.

Assumptions about caregiving, work, and retirement are tightly coupled with the increasing public discourse on civic engagement (Martinson & Minker, 2006). Underlying assumptions of the narrative on civic engagement are being challenged by critical feminist gerontologists, whose insights are particularly relevant to social workers who are concerned about who are left out of the narrative. The next section interrogates civic engagement as an example of a policy narrative, providing an opportunity to reconsider the societal push across generations to be engaged in civil society and its unintended consequences.

Civic Engagement as a Policy Narrative

Biggs (2001, p. 303) asked “How does social policy, and the stories it tells, influence the spaces in which we might grow old?” Acknowledging the increasing popularity of narratives in various arenas, including social gerontology, Biggs emphasized that narratives should not be taken lightly and that the social policies that emerge out of societal narratives are powerful in shaping behaviors and expectations. The transition from a capitalistic view of the free market economy to a more social-democratic approach in Western politics has brought an accompanying new narrative. The assumptions of the traditional welfare state and a free market politics perspective viewed older people as consumers of services, who were increasingly disengaged from the larger society, more dependent upon its largess, and essentially unproductive burdens. Examining what was then happening in both the United Kingdom and the United States, Biggs suggested that a different narrative has been constructed that moves from structured dependence to age as opportunity. The new “general consensus to be found within a policy economy approach states that dependence in later life is not an inevitable and biologically determined ‘fact of life,’ but is artificially created by a number of economic mechanisms” (p. 306). Thus, as the narrative changes, “the older person, under the gaze of social policy analysis [is] becoming not simply a consumer but an autonomous participant in civil society” (p. 307).

Biggs presented a detailed description of the many initiatives in the United Kingdom that at first blush appeared to be a celebration of elders and attempted to eliminate the inherent ageism in earlier policies. Four key areas for action that she discussed were changing the culture of how elders are viewed and recognizing their value and potential, offering opportunities to enable persons aged 50 and older to remain in the workforce, helping displaced workers search for jobs and reenter work, and highlighting the experience and availability of retired persons so that they can contribute their skills and experience to the larger community (p. 311). As Biggs noted, “Work-like activities are presented as a sort of social therapy that capitalizes on postmodern aging and simultaneously draws older people back into the social mainstream. Another marginalized group is saved!” (p. 311).

On the surface, it may appear that advocates of the aging are finally seeing the fruits of their labors and that recognition is being given to the value and worth of older citizens. This is a seductive narrative. However, just as the disengagement and dependence narrative tended to homogenize a widely diverse group of older people, so does the newer narrative that masks the unseen activities of caregiving and those more public activities, such as political dissidence, or that perpetuates the idea of activity for activity’s sake reminiscent of Kuhn’s (1977) concept of creating “playpens for the old” (Biggs, 2001, p. 313). “There is an astonishing absence of diversity in policies that assume that everyone from a white man in his fifties to a black woman in her nineties has the same personal and social priorities” (p. 313).

The civic engagement narrative offers an example of how basic assumptions become embedded in policies and practices within the societal fabric and across generations. As more and more people join the civic engagement bandwagon, the call to participate has often been leveraged by public and private funders across institutions. For example, incentives from funding sources are encouraging universities and colleges to partner, connect, and collaborate with their communities. The Community Outreach Partnership Center program was established in the early 1990s through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under the leadership of Henry Cisneros who created the Office of University Partnerships (2011). The Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land Grant Institutions and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching identified university-community “partnerships as critical themes for institutions of higher education (IHEs) [and] … as vital for teaching, research, and practice” (Butterfield & Soska, 2004, p. 1). Service learning (Tomkovick, Lester, Flunker, & Wells, 2008) spread across college campuses, disciplines, and professions, joining with lifelong learning programs. Wilson and Simson (2003, 2006) reported on a Legacy Leadership model, which was developed at the University of Maryland for use in both the United States and the Europe, that pulls older people into the mix. The call for civic and community engagement is being instilled in youths and touted across the generations.

The push for civic engagement also transcends presidential administrations and has increased with the election of a community organizer. On April 21, 2009, President Barak Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act (H.R. 1388) into law, reauthorizing and reforming the national service laws. Seen as a symbolic recognition of the importance of volunteerism by multiple groups, including the Gerontological Society of America, this enthusiasm for civic engagement arrived on the heels of a number of studies that surveyed persons of all ages to identify patterns and trends in participation in the civil society. Sponsored by large associations like the American Association of Retired Persons (2004) and well-known foundations, such as the Pew Charitable Trust (Pew Research Center, 2005), or the Atlantic Philanthropies' support of the American Society on Aging’s (2009) Civic Engagement Program, there is great interest in how older people, particularly the baby boomers, are doing and will be doing with their time. There is not a leading gerontological or nonprofit journal that has not published conceptual and empirical pieces on the subject of civic engagement and aging (see, e.g., Butler & Eckart, 2007; Einolf, 2009; Hong, Morrow-Howell, Tang, & Hinterlong, 2009; Kaskie, Imhof, Cavanaugh, & Culp, 2008; Morrow-Howell, Hinterlong, Rozario, & Tang, 2003, 2009).

A driving force for civic or community engagement is concern over perceived declines in traditional engagement activities. Herd and Meyer (2002) identified three arguments that are used to account for declines in civic engagement from social capitalists, moralists, and historical institutional theorists. The social capitalist perspective defines participation in civic activities as primarily through voluntary organizations and associations (both formal and informal), such as local sports teams, civic groups, charitable organizations, or even religious congregations. Fearful that a decline in these types of activities will lead to a reduction in social capital, social capitalists theorize that a mobile society and a host of related factors have led to diminished trust among community members. The solution, however, is not seen as top-down policies or governmental interventions. Moralists are similar to social capitalists, but they differ in the reasons for the decline in civic engagement. Moralists view the decline as a result of a “moral meltdown in American society,” particularly in the “cradle of citizenship” known as the family (Herd & Meyer, p. 668). Moralists see families, schools, businesses, and unions as the major building blocks of a civil society. They believe that rather than enacting public policies, declining civic engagement can be fixed by improving public morality and maintaining traditional families. Historical institutional theorists see civic engagement from a much broader perspective. Political and voluntary forms of participation have shifted to be replaced by professional organizations, lobbying groups, and workplace activities that serve as a locus from which conflict and political leverage can emanate. Historical institutionalists are more comfortable with the government’s role in civic engagement, although they prefer an incremental role. Herd and Meyer stated that across these three perspectives “Notably absent from their definitions of civic activity is care work, the daily tasks related to raising and caring for citizens” (p. 669).

Dannefer et al. (2008, p. 105) contended that “care cannot be understood without recognizing that it is generically a relationship with some degree of bi-directionality and mutuality. The care relationship … is part of a commonness of civic and personal development, the Möbius strip of necessity and meaning.” This understanding embeds two critically important elements. First, caregiving is mutual, meaning that both parties have something to give and that the process is generative, dialectical, and interactive. Thus, the relationship is productive, rather than one party being productive and the other passive. Second, since the personal is political, caregiving relationships become part of the societal fabric, rather than isolated incidents of interpersonal exchanges. With these assumptions in place, care work is a form of civic engagement, albeit not as visible in a public sense as other community activities. For example, Dannefer et al. stated that “these insights suggest a view of elders in long-term care as generative, with the potential to be socially and instrumentally productive” (p. 106).

Provisioning is a term used by feminist economists to expand the dimensions of work beyond just those attached to the labor force. The term “explicitly ties work to responsibilities via the pathways of relationships. Provisioning is defined as the work of securing resources and providing the necessities of life to those for whom one has relationships or responsibility” (Neysmith & Reitsma-Street, 2009, p. 237). Policy options are opened up when one focuses on the work–relationship connection and not just on the sphere in which work occurs. In addition, provisioning is not linked to the dichotomy of paid/unpaid labor and thus offers an alternative concept that is inclusive of all sorts of activities that are necessary for the relationship (Neysmith & Reitsma-Street, 2009, p. 238). Neysmith and Reitsma-Street’s study revealed that arguments as to whether caregiving is actually a form of civic engagement is less the issue than is the nation’s retreat from social provisioning that has forced older women to pick up the work.

Minkler and Holstein (2008), who described themselves as “two older critical gerontologists,” seized the opportunity to elaborate their concerns about the civic engagement movement in an essay that combined their personal and professional work. They reflected on their early lives when critical gerontology offered “an exciting means to bridge a passion for social justice work with a scholarly desire to explore the social construction of aging within a broad, socio-political and humanitarian context” (p. 196). Inspired by activists, such as Maggie Kuhn and Tish Sommers, Minkler and Holstein fast-forwarded 30 years to focus on the civic engagement movement that seeks to capture the baby boomers who have many more productive years to share with their communities. They argued that the movement is a nonpoliticized strategy in which older people are expected to embrace a vision of productive aging in which public activity is privileged over “private acts of sustenance and nurture” and emphasizes “the fit and healthy…. It speaks to some lives—the relatively prosperous and healthy—while eluding the most vulnerable. It reflects an uneasy mix of obligation, expectation, and choice” (p. 197). Minker and Holstein offered a provocative examination of what unstated assumptions about who and what is valued will affect them in their old age and questioned the expanding recruitment of volunteers to patch the “gaping holes in the safety net” (p. 197). They expressed concern over civic engagement both as a master narrative and a recognition of how the concepts of productive or successful aging are often defined in a universalistic, objectivist way.

Implications for Social Work

For many years, there was a small cohort of social work practitioners and educators who attempted to recruit their colleagues and students to work with older people. In those days, the “Age Wave” seemed distant, the baby boomers were far from retirement, and there were few student recruits. Those who were engaged in gerontological social work wondered why others did not want to work with older people and bemoaned the fact that only a small cadre of students chose a concentration, specialization, or certificate in aging. In recent years, content on aging has become much more prevalent in social work education because of the generosity of the John A. Hartford Foundation and its multiple geriatric social work initiatives (S. E. Lee, Damron-Rodriguez, Lawrance, & Volland, 2009; Sanders, Dorfman, & Ingram, 2009). Attention is being paid to preparing for an aging society and to developing geriatric competencies (E.-K. Lee & Waites, 2006). Initiatives to infuse content on aging into courses in both Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) and Master of Social Work (MSW) programs offer new opportunities for the study of aging in social work, and even social work textbooks are being interrogated in regard to their content on aging (Thompkins, Rosen, & Larkin, 2006). Thus, the groundwork has been laid for faculty, students, and practitioners to connect with the gerontological field.

Katz (2008) reflected on how personal ideas can be shaped by critical gerontology: “I take this opportunity to explore the life of thought through my own life, and conclude that our ideas about aging are bred in those places where humor, tragedy, conflict, passion and sympathy make it imperative that we ask the questions we do as critical thinkers” (p. 140). Critical and feminist gerontologists have been part of the gerontological field for 50 years, yet they will be the first to say that their voices have not always been part of the mainstream literature and that the focus of feminist theory on age and aging has picked up speed only as second-generation feminists have aged in place and developed deep personal interests in what it means to be old (Ray, 2008b). Feminist scholars have repeatedly observed that aging has not been central to feminist theory and that feminists are so dispersed across fields and professions that learning from one another is often countered by the complexity of interconnecting. There is also concern that the “f” word is not prevalent in the mainstream literature, that it has in fact been marginalized as have scholars who focus on aging and ageism (Calasanti, 2004b). Yet, there are social work feminists who have spent their careers studying aging and who have been instrumental in demonstrating the importance of connecting gender, race, socioeconomic status, and age, and there are feminist gerontologists from multiple fields who have raised the critical questions about the conflicts that dominate political and social thought (Calasanti, 1999). In this article, some of those scholars have been highlighted with the intention of including what they have to offer in the work that social work educators and practitioners do. They will likely not be found in the textbooks of the profession, but they need to become part of the learning discourse.

Feminist gerontologists offer alternative ways of thinking about the intersectionality of age with gender, race, class, and a host of other factors. They push the critical thinking envelope to question reductionistic or objectivist approaches, to allow interpretive and even radical ways of knowing to infuse the learning enterprise. Whether one looks at national policies, such as social security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Older Americans Act, the Serve America Act, or thousands of state and local social policies, critical feminist gerontologists raise and have raised the questions that need to be asked about underlying assumptions and unintended consequences. To those persons who see policy separate from practice, one need only practice in the field to experience the effects of the implementation of policies on individuals and groups. It is at the level of implementation that the practitioner recognizes the consequences of good intentions, and it is the practitioner who must join with others to ask the critical questions.

In the narrative on civic engagement, used in this article as an exemplar, there is an intergenerational drive for community partnering, service learning, lifelong learning, productivity, and successful aging. The strengths are that aging is viewed as a lifelong process (not just that the old are aging), something gerontologists have emphasized, and that one’s community is a social responsibility of all age groups across generations. There are opportunities for engagement that are opening up and a view of older persons as resources as well as consumers (Reed, Cook, Bolter, & Douglas, 2008). Yet, this welcomed intergenerational focus may mask differences that need to be recognized and illustrate the critical complexity that is inherent in any social movement. Buried in this narrative are expectations and messages that tell persons without resources that they are not successful if they are not engaged in certain ways; that privilege formal activities, such as volunteering through established dominant channels; and that neglect to consider the invisibility of provisioning (the mutuality of care relationships) that weaves the societal fabric. Feminist gerontologists have pointed out that the narrative socializes citizens to pick up the slack when the social safety net has gaping holes, potentially reinforcing a residual view of social welfare all in the name of good intentions. A homogeneous view of engagement fails to recognize the potential conflicts between paid and unpaid work, the cultural differences among groups and individuals, the nuanced meanings of work and retirement, and even the possibility that disengagement is an option.

For social work educators, there is a wealth of critical thinking available in the work of feminist gerontologists to which students can be exposed. With the impetus to incorporate aging into the curriculum, students can be encouraged to examine the geriatric competencies they are learning and identify the paradoxes inherent in rationalistic, objectivist, and the interpretive, subjectivist approaches as well as the conflicts that are inherent in different views (Ray, 2003b). It seems that critical gerontological scholarship is available to support critical perspectives and feminist thought but that it is incumbent upon social work educators and practitioners to raise its visibility in their various arenas and to ask the hard questions about the dominant policy narratives. As Biggs (2001, p. 315) said, “We are being told a tale, but we do not necessarily have to believe it.”