Susan A. McDaniel

Born at the Right Time? Gendered Generations and Webs of Entitlement and Responsibility*

Analyses of social change and challenge in sociologies for women often start with some attention to generation. Yet, generation per se has been an underconceptualized sociological construct as a structural dimension of stratification, particularly gender stratification, or as a lens through which we see social change. The concept of gendered generation, the ways in which women are positioned and position themselves in political and social struggles and everyday lives in family and work by age and gender together, has been largely untheorized and underexplored. The focus in this paper, is on gendered intergenerational relations which lie at the heart of extensions in life expectancy and rapid social, economic, political and technological changes and permits a new perspective on life course changes, on womens movements, on generational inter- relations among women, and on the construction of socially situated identities over time. What is known about gendered intergenerational relations, from data and research, is surprisingly little. Generation and gender have each emerged as social categories and identity signifiers, which shape public debate as well as social cohesion and public policy. This paper, part of a larger project on intergenerational interconnections, brings together existing data and research on gendered intergenerational relations, develops a conceptual framework for analysing gendered generations, and suggests questions, including new avenues of research, that remain to be asked.

Toward Disentangling Policy Implications of Economic and Demographic Changes in Canada's Aging Population

Demographic change and policy reorientation are often conflated with economic and social changes in anticipating the social and policy implications of demographic aging. In this paper, an attempt is made to begin to disentangle these factors to gain a clearer sense of the implications of population aging for social and policy responses. Analyzed here are selected socio-economic changes that intervene in the connection of demographic aging to policy, such as actual working patterns by age, education to work timing, retirement patterns, productivity shifts, pension investment shifts, policy changes such as the move toward economic liberalism and away from redistribution and social protection, changing family patterns, and shifts among generations in terms of wealth inequality. These are related to shifts in demographic age structures. Data which are more illustrative than the analytical focus of the paper, come largely from various Statistics Canada sources.

Life Course as a Policy Lens: Challenges and Opportunities

Ce groupe d’études traitant de l’approche des parcours de vie comme outil d’évaluation de certaines politiques publiques est le produit de plus de un an et demi de recherches et de discussions parmi des chercheurs universitaires et des analystes de politiques. Les six études empiriques de ce numéro spécial ont toutes pour objectif d’élargir la portée de l’approche des parcours de vie en l’appliquant à des domaines liés aux politiques publiques qui, jusqu’à maintenant, n’avaient pas été abordés de cette façon. Ces études portent sur la santé des Autochtones, la participation sociale, les conditions de logement précaires et les expulsions, les trajectoires de revenus et les changements qui marquent le cadre de vie des personnes âgées. Les conclusions majeures qui se dégagent de ce projet de recherche sont les suivantes : 1. Le Canada est à l’avant-garde en matière d’évaluation de politiques publiques grâce à l’approche des parcours de vie, et cet avantage devrait stimuler les chercheurs et les décideurs à aller plus loin encore dans cette voie ; 2. L’approche des parcours de vie est moins axée sur les itinéraires individuels que sur les interactions entre les individus et les institutions sociales, et particulièrement sur les situations (les «scénarios») où les structures sociales sont sources d’inégalités et où les inégalités sont imprimées dans les parcours de vie eux-mêmes ; 3. L’approche des parcours de vie, utilisée comme moyen de décrire des cheminements marqués par des dépendances et d’expliquer l’influence des forces de gravité sociale et des événements déstabilisants, met l’accent sur les conditions sociales plutôt que sur les choix individuels ; 4. Pour les décideurs politiques, l’approche des parcours de vie est un outil plus pragmatique, parce que plus sensible à la réalité que vivent les acteurs sociaux ; par conséquent, les acteurs sociaux se reconnaissent mieux dans les politiques élaborées grâce à cet outil ; et 5. L’approche des parcours de vie offre aux acteurs sociaux, aux chercheurs et aux responsables de politiques la possibilité de travailler en collaborant plus étroitement.

Generationing relations in challenging times: Americans and Canadians in mid-life in the Great Recession

Generation can be seen as a crossroads where multiple socioeconomic influences intersect with individual life courses. Conceptualized as a process, performed dynamically and relationally, rather than a static category, generationing builds self-identities and concepts of how the social order is expected to work. In this article the authors ask how the multilayered processes of generationing, as experienced by those in mid-life, are affected by the shock of the 2008 economic crisis in the United States and in Canada, two countries very differently touched by the crisis. The US has suffered greatly with home foreclosures, bankruptcies, continuing high unemployment and spreading poverty. Canada, by contrast, has had negligible levels of home foreclosures, few bankruptcies and lower unemployment. The data are qualitative interviews conducted specifically with those in mid-life in working and middle classes in comparable medium-sized cities in the two countries, from fall 2008 through spring 2010. The authors’ findings suggest that the shock of the economic crisis has deeply transformed the lives of those in the middle of generations and all those whose lives are linked to theirs, as well as the processes of generationing, particularly in the US, with implications for families, for societal cohesion and social order.

Families by Choice and the Management of Low Income Through Social Supports

Processes of individualization have transformed families in late modernity. Although families may be more opportunistically created, they still face challenges of economic insecurity. In this article, we explore through in-depth qualitative interviews how families by choice manage low income through the instrumental and expressive supports that they give and receive. Two central themes organize our analysis: “defining/doing family” and “generationing.” Coupling the individualization thesis with a life course perspective, we find that families by choice, which can include both kin and nonkin relations, are created as a result of shared life events and daily needs. Families by choice are then sustained through intergenerational practices and relations. Importantly, we add to the growing body of literature that illustrates that both innovation and convention characterize contemporary family life for low-income people.

Pension Politics and Challenges: Retirement Policy Implications*

Pensions in Canada have become political, with challenges and changes occurring, and likely to occur, on several fronts, including the dismantling of universality in Old Age Security, possible alterations in eligibility for Spouses Allowance, the allocation of pension credits upon marital dissolution, issues of vesting and portability, coverage, rights of employers/employees with respect to pension funds, among others. In addition, there have been challenges to mandatory retirement, changes in years spent in retirement, and in retirement negotiations at the individual level. Retirement and the retirement process are influenced by the social and political context of pension policy and practice, yet the implications of pension politics and challenges for retirement policy in Canada have not been fully explored and many new issues have lately arisen. This paper describes current pension policies, and changes to them, and explores their impacts for retirement, suggesting areas to which future research could be directed.

Health care policy in an aging Canada: The Alberta ‘experiment’

Abstract Tensions and contradictions abound in health care policy in Canada in the 1990s, with Canadian public health care, the envy of many observers throughout the world and the pride of Canadians, on the brink of destruction. Challenged by a number efforces, most notably public policy shifts, insistent rhetoric holds that drastic cuts are inevitable, that universal health care is a luxury no longer affordable and that the health care funding crunch is related to population aging and the large and looming demands for health care by the elderly. Realities, however, contrast with this rhetoric. Nowhere in Canada has health care undergone as radical a change as in the Province of Alberta in the period since 1993. In this article, health care policy changes in Alberta are examined as an ‘experiment’ in Canadian health care restructuring using a socio-historical political economy approach, consistent with critical gerontology. Aging and the aged are found to be centrally involved and implicated in health care changes, but in ways different than those predicted in Canada prior to contemporary health care restructuring.

Health Care in Regression: Contradictions, Tensions and Implications for Canadian Seniors

Le vieillissement et les aines posent des problemes difficiles aux plans neoliberaux de reforme des soins de sante et au concept de reduction des couts. Les aines sont affectes directement, et souvent les premiers, par le changement des priorites dans les soins de sante et en meme temps, influencent les changements apportes. Les contradictions, les tensions et les implications des tendances courantes dans le systeme de sante canadien sont analysees sur cinq plans: l’importance que les canadiens attachent aux soins de sante, leur attitude envers les reductions de couts, la bonne sante et la longevite en tant que legs, leur vision des reformes dans le secteur de la sante comparativement a la realite de meme que la sante vue comme un bien public/ prive. Les contradictions abondent et il y a une difference significative entre les tendances actuelles des reformes des soins de sante et l’opinion publique.

Mothers of invention? Meshing the roles of inventor, mother, and worker☆

Abstract Our focus in this study is on the social-structural and cultural barriers experienced by modern women inventors. Our aim is to discover and explore the constraints that inhibit women inventors from contributing fully to the process of innovation. Are there barriers and constraints working to make womens inventions and themselves as inventors invisible? Is this lack of recognition related to the fact that women inventors live in a patriarchal society and work as a minority group in a male-dominated field? A greater problem for women inventors than the barriers of time, finances, lack of technical skills and lack of support is a social structure that undermines the legitimacy of womens experiences as inventors. We found that women inventors interviewed for this study are reluctant to acknowledge the inventor label for themselves, no matter how successful they are as inventors. This may be rooted in societal denial of any role for women that might undermine the primacy of the socially circumscribed female role. The myth is thus perpetuated that women are not inventors, even among women inventors themselves. Voltaires 1764 view, “There have been very learned women as there have been women warriors, but there have never been women inventors” (Alic, 1981: 305), seems to find support in Canada in the late 1980s.

Canada's Aging Population (1986) Redux

Canada’s Aging Population par Susan McDaniel était le livre inaugurale dans la série Butterworths sur le vieillissement dans les années 1980. Ceci a ouvert une industrie d’expansion dans la recherche sur le vieillissement. Maintenant, on sait beaucoup plus sur les processus – à la fois individuels et collectives – qui font partie du vieillissement. Maintenant, on peut faire des projections plus fiables de la population future. Cela dit, les mythes et les malentendus persistent – en particulier sur les implications politiques du vieillissement de la population. Il semble que les mêmes craintes et les mêmes angoisses se répètent maintes fois. Il reste une déconnexion entre nos connaissances croissantes au sujet de la population et les médias ou les réponses politiques. Canada’s Aging Population by Susan McDaniel was the inaugural book in the Butterworths series on aging in the 1980s. It opened a “growth industry” in research on aging. Much more is known now about the processes, both individual and collective, that are part of aging. More reliable projections of future population can now be made. That said, myths and misunderstandings – particularly about the policy implications of population aging – persist. It seems that the same fears and anxieties occur again and again. The disconnect remains between our growing knowledge about population aging and media or policy responses.