Women of the 60s and 70s Changed Everything.

By Karen and Erica

When we were younger, entering the workforce, we were challenging the status quo. We wanted to be players in the wider world, with careers that fulfilled us, and that provided financial independence.

Now that we are older, we are challenging the way retirement has been done for generations.

It turns out that there is a connection between the two, as we have always thought. A recent study confirms that those who were countercultural when younger remain so when older.

The retirement of the baby boom generation has prompted much speculation about possible changes they may make to life’s third age, including the notion that the cultural revolution they witnessed in youth has been instrumental in shaping their life course (Gilleard & Higgs, 2002), and retirement views (Hamilton & Hamilton, 2006). In line with our hypotheses, our results support the idea that countercultural identification is associated with retirement views. Those who identified more with countercultural movements in their youth were more likely to identify with active retirement views such as the new beginning and continuer retirement views. Similarly, countercultural identification was negatively associated with the more inactive, traditional view of retirement as a time to enjoy no longer working. From a theoretical perspective, our results support not only the specific idea of the importance of the culture of the sixties and seventies in the retirement views of boomers (Gilleard & Higgs, 2002), but more broadly, the importance of identity formed in youth and its enduring impact on the life course (Kehily, 2007; Kinney, 1993).

The study does not take specific account of Boomer women, but counts feminism as countercultural. Feminists who grew up in the 60s and 70s changed the world of work, mostly by being in the workforce and changing its culture by living in it. Many of those same women are now starting post-first-career lives, and are changing the world of retirement, to suit themselves.

Not surprising, perhaps that the impulses that moved us to demand a place in the wider world when we were starting out remain motivating for us. We wanted equality then, because we wanted to decide for ourselves how to live our lives. We succeeded, as a cohort, in making our world better for women. We got occupied with careers and children, and changing the world was not necessarily on the front burner. Then we retired, and realized the gains in those early years were, in some respects eroding, and in any event we needed different advances as older women. We had to change the world all over again. We got back in the rhythm of change, all of us, together, again.

We’re not done.