I asked if she saw any solutions to this, and she mentioned flexible policies, such as job sharing or part-time work. When I mentioned how this can backfire, she agreed, saying that men need to utilize such policies too. She also mentioned the importance of evening the playing field with regard to adequate pay, and valuing low-skilled or women-dominated occupations to a greater extent, saying “I’m not talking about communism here, I agree that some people should be paid more, I’m saying that some jobs are undervalued and underpaid…janitors and secretaries should be paid more. And women’s jobs shouldn’t be seen as lesser. People should have a livable wage, no matter what they do.”
I went on a bit of a rant about people who deny any gender essentialism, challenging the assumption that perfect equality should be the end goal, but she countered with the point that we cannot disentangle what’s innate and what’s learned. She brought up the example of doctors formerly being exclusively male, with many people at the time saying that women just didn’t want to be doctors as a justification, but now more than half of medical school students are women. She said I shouldn’t be too quick to settle for unequal representation, because it’s too soon to know what women would prefer if they were free from norms and stereotypes.
We then moved to retirement, which was, like in class, not super exciting. She expected the largest group of retirees to be those who feel worse in retirement, but agreed that the Wang (2007) results might be due to the measurement intervals. She guessed nearly all the antecedents of successful adjustment listed in Wang (2011). She thought the most difficult piece is not having a schedule and figuring out how to stay busy. She also expected that the transition might be harder for my dad than her, because, though he has high stress and dislikes his job, she thinks that her career has always been very self-scheduled and flexible and on her own terms, so she’s had more practice that will help her in retirement. She said that she knew that some people are happier in retirement, but she’s worried about getting old, “Time has flown by. I don’t feel old until I look in the mirror, so we’re taking all the mirrors out. I keep thinking ‘Wait a second! I’m not done with that yet!’ I wish I would have been more adventurous travel-wise. I would have done a different career…I don’t know what it would have been.” I reminded her she is still healthy and has time to be adventurous, and she plans to stay active and take bike trips with my dad. And I need to keep harassing them about planning their trip to Greece.
