Table Of ContentMother Tillle
Women, Aging, and Ethics
Edited by
Margaret Urban Walker
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham· Boulder· New York· Oxford
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Published in the United States of America
by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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Copyright © 1999 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Chapter 2 copyright © 1999 by Diana Tietjens Meyers
Chapter 3 copyright © 1999 by Sara Ruddick
First paperback printing 2000
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval "system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
The hardback edition of this book was catalogued by the Library of Congress as follows:
Mother time: women, aging, and ethics / edited by Margaret Urban
Walker.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Aged women-Social conditions. 2. Aging-Moral and ethical
aspects. I. Walker, Margaret Urban, 1948-
HQI061.M67 1999
305.26--dc21 98-45361
CIP
ISBN 0-8476-9260-4 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8476-9261-3
Printed in the United States of America
en<
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSIINISO Z39.48-1992.
For
my sister Linda
and
my brother Frank
remembering how we cared
Contents
Acknowledgments IX
Introduction 1
Margaret Urban Walker
Part One: Looks
1 There Are No Old Venuses: Older Women's
Responses to Their Aging Bodies 7
Frida Kerner Furman
2 Miroir, Memoire, Mirage: Appearance, Aging, and
Women 23
Diana Tietjens Meyers
Part Two: Lives
3 Virtues and Age 45
Sara Ruddick
4 Unplanned Obsolescence: Some Reflections on Aging 61
Sandra Lee Bartky
5 Stories of My Old Age 75
Hilde Lindemann Nelson
6 Getting Out of Line: Alternatives to Life As a Career 97
Margaret Urban Walker
7 Death's Gender 113
James Lindemann Nelson
Part Three: Looking at Health Care
8 Old Women Out of Control: Some Thoughts on
Aging, Ethics, and Psychosomatic Medicine 133
Susan Wendell
Vll
Contents
Vlll
9 Menopause: Taking the Cures or Curing the Takes? 151
Joan C. Callahan
10 Religious Women, Medical Settings, and Moral Risk 175
Peggy DesAutels
11 Age, Sex, and Resource Allocation 189
Daniel Callahan
Part Four: Living Arrangements
12 Aging Fairly: Feminist and Disability Perspectives on
Intergenerational Justice 203
Anita Silvers
13 Home Care, Women, and Aging: A Case Study of
Injustice 227
Martha Holstein
14 Caring for Ourselves: Peer Care in Autonomous Aging 245
Robin N. Fiore
15 Age-Segregated Housing As a Moral Problem: An
Exercise in Rethinking Ethics 261
Joan C. Tronto
Index 279
About the Contributors 289
Acknowledgments
This project was made possible by a grant to the Ethics Center of the
University of South Florida from the Commission on Aging with Dignity.
The Ethics Center of the University of South Florida provided the material
and staff support for all phases of the project. A working conference that
allowed contributors to generate and refine ideas was hosted by the Center
on February 20-22, 1998. The conference was funded by the Pettus
Crowe Foundation, with additional support from the Florida Department
of Elder Affairs. On behalf of the Ethics Center, I thank these sponsors for
seeing the importance of seeding discussion on ethics, women, and aging.
The views expressed in the chapters, of course, represent only those of
individual authors.
In organizing the project and editing the volume for the Ethics Center,
I was fortunate to have the assistance and counsel of colleagues and staff at
the Center. Peter French, director of the Center, initiated the project idea,
followed its progress with keen interest, and remained enthusiastic in his
support for it throughout. Peggy DesAutels, assistant director of the Center,
provided advice, encouragement, and her characteristic good judgment
throughout the project's development; she also served as a facilitator for
sessions at the contributor's conference. Robin Fiore was indispensable at
several key points in helping me move the project along; with Peggy, she
was instrumental in designing a novel and successful conference format.
Kathy Agne, the Center's office manager, was tireless and exact in working
out all travel and local conference arrangements with participants. She
brought generosity and good cheer to all phases of the project and confer
ence, from providing Florida oranges from her own backyard tree for our
guests, to preparing the final manuscript for publication with energy and
care. Asuncion St. Clair efficiently organized the original invitations to
contributors.
I am grateful for the complete support and enthusiasm of Maureen
MacGrogan; one blessing of a scholar's life is having a good friend who's a
IX
x Acknowledgments
great editor. Very special thanks go to Lynn Gemmell, our production
editor, for steering us through a high-speed production process with a
steady hand and a clear head.
Finally, I want to thank the contributors to this volume, who rose on
short notice to a challenge to tread on what was for most of them new
ground. It has been a pleasure to be instructed by their work. I have been
rewarded not only by what they have done, but by the cooperation and
camaraderie they have displayed throughout.
Margaret Walker
St. Petersburg
May 1998
Introduction
Margaret Urban Walker
../Cm I old? Am I "older"? When am I old, and how can I tell? Who
determines this? How does my growing older affect my experience of my
self? How does the evidence of my aging affect others' experiences of me?
If I ask these questions, I ask about the reality and experience of aging. If I
ask whether it makes any difference whether the person asking these ques
tions is female rather than male, I broach the topic of gender and aging.
And if I ask how the reality and the experience of aging affect understand
ings-women's own and others'-of women's selves and their moral
agency, of their responsibilities to themselves and to others, and of others'
responsibilities to them, I enter fairly novel territory. It is this largely unfa
miliar terrain into which the authors in this volume were invited. Under
significant constraint of time, they were asked to make initial and explor
atory journeys into "ethical issues in women's aging."
The very notion that women's aging presents distinctly moral prob
lems, both for women and about them, is not obvious. What is striking is
how little this nexus of topics-women, aging, and ethics-has so far been
explored. There are large literatures on aging in social science, gerontology,
and medicine. In the past two decades empirical research specifically on
women's aging has been growing in tandem with an elderly population in
our society that is ever more disproportionately female at the close of the
twentieth century. A small literature on ethics and aging has emerged in
the past twenty years as well. It includes humanistic, cultural, and critical
studies that explore the history, meaning, and societal construction and
valuation of aging, as well as medical, legal, and ethical issues about health
care and the end of life. Yet this ethical work has not much addressed
situations and experiences of women, or the ways that gender in our society
distinctively shapes the reality, experience, and meaning of aging.
Our project was to begin an exploration of assumptions, practices, and
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