Memória e envelhecimento: narrativas sobre questões de gênero e do mundo do trabalho

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the elderly’s description on the labor world, mostly, coming from the recent theoretical discussions on aging process, gender, labor and memory. We will focus on the role played by retirement, since, in some discourses, it is pointed as one of the reasons for keeping the aged in the consumer market. We will show what the ones who still work think, as well as the ones who cannot make it due to health problems; the ones who managed to retire, the ones who still could not make it. We also focus on retirement values, other sources of income they might have, the role of the family as a counter point to rural work. In this context, it is important to point the feminization phenomenon of the ageing process, since they are made up mostly by women. It also deals woth important factors such as divorce and widowhood which produce an ageing process without the presence of a spouse. This ends up with a movement in the search for activities that promote the sociability, income and the search for new partners. From the data collected, it’s possible to visualize the differences between being a man and being a woman and the implications that emerge from them. Another important issue that we indicate is that, in ageing population process, the entire social structure is adjusted interfering in the relationship with people from other age groups; we also show ways to deal with new family designs and the role of social welfare and public policies.