The retirement experience is very different from one person to another. The economic and cultural level, the type of work that has been carried out... and whether one is a man or a woman counts a lot. "The conditions in which old age is reached are the consequence of our decisions throughout life, and those decisions have to do with the different gender roles, so growing old as a man is not the same as being a woman," says the sociologist. and director of the DeustoBarómetro María Silvestre.
Of course, not all women or all men age the same, nor does the generation of women that is now reaching retirement resemble that of their mothers; But sociologists and gerontologists affirm that the gender mandate on motherhood and care marks their old age. For better and for worse.
For the worse, because they are the ones who most take advantage of reductions in working hours, permits or part-time jobs to take care of their children or their parents, and this impacts their economic capacity as they get older in the form of less pension and less assets.
It also impacts their identity and social function, something that can be a burden on their participation in public life but which becomes a protective factor for women when they reach retirement.
“Man links his identity more to professional performance and, when he retires, he has an identity crisis and sometimes depression and a feeling of loneliness appear; On the other hand, the woman who cares ages with a multidimensional identity: she has been a mother, a wife, a mother-in-law, a neighbor... and she has worked, and when she does not have a job, she does not lack other occupations, so that multi-identity protects them", she explained a few years ago. a few weeks Silvestre to the heads of the entities that participate in the Always Accompanied program of the “la Caixa” Foundation.
The gerontologist and psychologist Javier Yanguas assures that women “find it easier to transition from working life to retirement because they have had a more active relational life and their identity is less related to work, because they have cared more and caring, "That takes time off your schedule, it also gives you meaning, it gives you values and relationships."
She adds that, in general, women have an advantage when it comes to recognizing and talking about emotions and feelings, they are more diverse in their relationships, and this helps them in post-retirement. “Old age changes your relationship with existence, you know that you are in the last stage of life and that forces you to manage emotions, to talk about challenges, desires and priorities and, without wanting to stereotype, men are less open to recognition of their feelings,” says Yanguas.
Belén Martínez, responsible for Agenda 2030 and training at HelpAge Spain - an entity that helps older people defend their rights - assures that women are more socially active than men after retiring because they are part of broader care networks, they have They have had to be interrelated all their lives, and “they are also more likely than men to ask for help from outsiders or to admit that they don't know something.”
And he gives a very illustrative example: "Many women come to us with their husbands' mobile phones so that we can teach them how to do digital paperwork, because they don't dare."
“It is more difficult for men to recognize that they can learn something or show signs of vulnerability by telling others about their needs or recognizing that they lose abilities with age,” Silvestre agrees.
Pérez points out that when retirement arrives, women are more inclined to reinvent themselves by learning, looking at what activities are offered to them or what things they can do that have a community impact even if they do not imply an economic return. “For men, the change in stage is more abrupt because they have less of a support network outside the professional environment and that is why they often seek to extend their working life or integrate into another structure that has an economic return,” says Martínez.
But, says the HelpAge training manager, being more participatory does not prevent women from feeling more socially excluded than men or from not suffering the social burden of gender roles. “If they don't take care of the family, they are bad: bad mothers, bad grandmothers or bad women if they don't take care of their husbands,” says Martínez.
And he emphasizes that added to this are their greatest material deficiencies: “their risk of poverty is higher, they have less access to housing, less purchasing power and fewer properties, and this leaves them with an economic dependency that sometimes limits their ability to create a different life project when retiring.”
