中欧社会论坛 - China Europa ForumWomen’s Life Stories: Transcending barriers of continuity through the development of alternative discourses of ageing and identity
Authors: Sue McPherson
Date: août 2005
URL: www.diversityinretirement.net/WomenGrowingOlder/WGO.html
By the time women become older women, their identities have probably undergone
reconstruction, reorganisation, and revamping. Memories will be rethought, lives will be
structured anew, more than once, and attempts will have been made to restore what once was
to its original condition. Women find ways to cope with the long-term effects of living life as
a woman, and with the ageing process itself. In this paper, I shall draw on women’s life
stories, to explore the dynamics of discourse and identity, examining differences in narrative
styles of the participants and the influence of discourse embedded in our minds and culture. It
is the lives of earlier cohorts of women that enable us to see how discourses change over
time, how their power wanes or increases – and how women adapt, cope, and resist.
Discussed in this paper are the themes of continuity throughout the life cycle and alternative
lives, which can be used to examine and understand the lives of those whose identities fall
outside traditional discourses of life cycle development.