Wendy Loretto
Biographic Data
| ID | 296867 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wendy Loretto |
| GIVEN NAMES | Wendy |
| FAMILY NAME | Loretto |
| SIGNATURE | LORETTO W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1313-1635 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 355 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Extending working lives and the subjective financial wellbeing of mid-later life workers
Despite a UK policy focus on extending working lives and delaying retirement, the number of workers aged fifty-plus in the workforce has declined post-Covid. The reasons for this decline are not entirely clear. Based on face-to-face interviews with fifty-four UK workers age sixty-plus, this study highlights the important role subjective financial wellbeing plays in the decision-making process regarding retirement timing. Findings show that the cu…
The long shadow of divorce
Divorce is increasingly common and can have a significant impact on later-life work and retirement. However, the lived experience of choice and control around divorce and its financial ramifications is not adequately understood. This article demonstrates how women and men differentially experience divorce as a long-run lifecourse factor, which can impact an individual’s scope for choice and control about working in later life, and how and when to…
Menopause, work and mid‐life
This article investigates how the complexity of life domains of menopause‐aged women creates a paradox of simultaneously challenging the ideal worker stereotype while being caught within it. The empirical setting of menopause at work acts to highlight how work, life, and health pressures are entangled in how women present themselves at work, through varying organizational and societal expectations of being ‘fit for work’. We draw on 80 semi‐struc…
A selfish generation? 'Baby boomers', values, and the provision of childcare for grandchildren
Baby boomers', born after the Second World War, have been portrayed as selfish and individualistic, depriving subsequent generations of the opportunities they themselves benefitted from. This debate has ignored intergenerational transfers within families, such as provision of grandparental childcare. This article explores why grandparents choose to provide childcare for grandchildren while their adult children are working. Drawing on qualitative …
Understanding older worker precarity
In policy debates it is commonly claimed that older workers are entering a period of choice and control. In contrast, Guy Standing's book The Precariat: The Dangerous New Class , published in 2011, argues that older people are increasingly joining the ‘precariat’, by taking low-level jobs to supplement dwindling pension incomes. We argue that many older workers, not just those in ‘precarious jobs’, feel a sense of ‘ontological precarity’. Pressur…
Extending working life and the management of change. Is the workplace ready for the ageing worker
Increasing longevity and the strain on state and occupational pensions have brought into question long-held assumptions about the age of retirement, and raised the prospect of a workplace populated by ageing workers. In the United Kingdom the default retirement age has gone, incremental increases in state pension age are being implemented and ageism has been added to workplace anti-discrimination laws. These changes are yet to bring about the ant…
The Older Worker
The roles that older workers play in labour markets has received a great deal of policy and academic scrutiny in response to economic crises and demographic change. As a starting point, this focus has paradoxically resulted in insufficient attention to older workers themselves. The article is thus concerned with refocusing the agenda for research onto the older worker. Building on an extensive literature review, four gaps in knowledge are identif…
Gendered Ageing in the New Economy
No abstract available
Gender, age and flexible working in later life
In many countries economic and social concerns associated with ageing populations have focused attention onto flexible forms of working as key to encouraging people to work longer and delay retirement. This article argues that there has been a remarkable lack of attention paid to the role of gender in extending working lives and contends that this gap has arisen because of two, inter-related, oversights: little consideration of relationships betw…
Problematizing Gendered Ageing in the New Economy
Recent commentaries have highlighted the importance of age and ageing as holding significant structural and experiential implications for individuals both within organizations and situated in the larger social system of organizing.Contra traditional conceptions of age as linear, biologically determined and chronologically fixed, perceptions of age circulate and intersect with circuits of knowledge which appropriate organizational life, particular…
The domestic and gendered context for retirement
Against a global backdrop of population and workforce ageing, successive UK governments have encouraged people to work longer and delay retirement. Debates focus mainly on factors affecting individuals’ decisions on when and how to retire. We argue that a fuller understanding of retirement can be achieved by recognizing the ways in which individuals’ expectations and behaviours reflect a complicated, dynamic set of interactions between domestic e…
Introduction
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Reforming State Pension Provision in ‘Liberal’ Anglo-Saxon Countries
There are good theoretical reasons for expecting pension reform in Anglo-Saxon countries to follow similar paths. Esping-Andersen (1990) famously identified these countries as belonging to the same ‘Liberal’ model of welfare, under which benefits, including pensions, are said to be residual and weakly ‘de-commodifying’, reducing individuals’ reliance on the market to a much lesser degree than elsewhere. Pierson (2001) has furthermore argued that …
Some Useful Sources
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Identity work and the 'unemployed' worker
This article seeks to explore how older individuals negotiate and manage their self-identity in relation to work while situated without paid employment. After reviewing the current positions of the older unemployed in the UK, noting the substantial overlap between age and disability, we turn our attention to conceptualizing the lived experiences of individuals through exploring 'identity work' as a means of understanding a non-working work identi…
Employers' attitudes, practices and policies towards older workers
Despite policy emphasis on the importance of older workers (i.e. those aged 50 and above) to current and future labour markets, relatively little is known about the ways in which employers' attitudes, policies and practices influence their recruitment and retention. Drawing upon previous work by Taylor and Walker, this article reports qualitative research among employers across Scotland, which sought to investigate further the relationships betwe…
Population ageing and older workers
Increasing employment of older workers (those aged 50 and over) has been proposed as a strategy to cushion the impact of declining and ageing populations. Focusing on Scotland, this article considers the various measures that have been put forward to counteract population decline, and reviews public policy approaches aimed at increasing economic activity rates among older workers. It is argued that the attitudes and behaviours of employers are a …
Work, More Work and Retirement
This article reports the findings from a qualitative study in Scotland, UK, which explored, in some depth, older employees' preferences and expectations regarding work and retirement. Many expected to continue working, but various barriers frustrated those expectations, especially over-rigidity in employers' approaches. The research highlighted the diversity of factors that played a part, including gender, size of employing organisation, and heal…
Introduction Themed Section
Across the industrialised nations, the labour market participation of older workers (i.e. those aged 50 and over) continues to attract considerable attention, as the numbers in employment decline and those who are inactive or retired increase (for a 21-country review see OECD, 2006). Against a background of concern over the economic and social implications of low employment rates among the over-50s, much public policy has come to focus on extendi…
Employment Relations and the Health Service
Never the Right Age? Gender and Age‐Based Discrimination in Employment
Although UK legislation against age discrimination is required by December 2006, little is yet known about how ageism affects different age categories of employees, and the gender dimensions of ageism have also been neglected. Both issues were investigated by questionnaire survey, producing responses from over 1000 employees of a major UK financial services enterprise. The extent and manifestations of ageism were found to vary across age categori…
Ageism and employment
This paper traces the emergence and evolution of the concept of ageism with respect to employment matters in the UK, and challenges some features of the emerging concept as defective and undermining of efforts to eradicate age discrimination in employment. Also revealed is some loosening in recent years of the association of the term ‘ageism’ with older employees. This latter observation informed the focus of our empirical work, which examined th…
Never the Right Age? Gender and Age‐Based Discrimination in Employment
Although UK legislation against age discrimination is required by December 2006, little is yet known about how ageism affects different age categories of employees, and the gender dimensions of ageism have also been neglected. Both issues were investigated by questionnaire survey, producing responses from over 1000 employees of a major UK financial services enterprise. The extent and manifestations of ageism were found to vary across age categori…
Identity work and the 'unemployed' worker
This article seeks to explore how older individuals negotiate and manage their self-identity in relation to work while situated without paid employment. After reviewing the current positions of the older unemployed in the UK, noting the substantial overlap between age and disability, we turn our attention to conceptualizing the lived experiences of individuals through exploring 'identity work' as a means of understanding a non-working work identi…
The domestic and gendered context for retirement
Against a global backdrop of population and workforce ageing, successive UK governments have encouraged people to work longer and delay retirement. Debates focus mainly on factors affecting individuals’ decisions on when and how to retire. We argue that a fuller understanding of retirement can be achieved by recognizing the ways in which individuals’ expectations and behaviours reflect a complicated, dynamic set of interactions between domestic e…
Gender, age and flexible working in later life
In many countries economic and social concerns associated with ageing populations have focused attention onto flexible forms of working as key to encouraging people to work longer and delay retirement. This article argues that there has been a remarkable lack of attention paid to the role of gender in extending working lives and contends that this gap has arisen because of two, inter-related, oversights: little consideration of relationships betw…
Understanding older worker precarity
In policy debates it is commonly claimed that older workers are entering a period of choice and control. In contrast, Guy Standing's book The Precariat: The Dangerous New Class , published in 2011, argues that older people are increasingly joining the ‘precariat’, by taking low-level jobs to supplement dwindling pension incomes. We argue that many older workers, not just those in ‘precarious jobs’, feel a sense of ‘ontological precarity’. Pressur…
The Older Worker
The roles that older workers play in labour markets has received a great deal of policy and academic scrutiny in response to economic crises and demographic change. As a starting point, this focus has paradoxically resulted in insufficient attention to older workers themselves. The article is thus concerned with refocusing the agenda for research onto the older worker. Building on an extensive literature review, four gaps in knowledge are identif…
Extending working life and the management of change. Is the workplace ready for the ageing worker
Increasing longevity and the strain on state and occupational pensions have brought into question long-held assumptions about the age of retirement, and raised the prospect of a workplace populated by ageing workers. In the United Kingdom the default retirement age has gone, incremental increases in state pension age are being implemented and ageism has been added to workplace anti-discrimination laws. These changes are yet to bring about the ant…
Ageism and employment
This paper traces the emergence and evolution of the concept of ageism with respect to employment matters in the UK, and challenges some features of the emerging concept as defective and undermining of efforts to eradicate age discrimination in employment. Also revealed is some loosening in recent years of the association of the term ‘ageism’ with older employees. This latter observation informed the focus of our empirical work, which examined th…
A selfish generation? 'Baby boomers', values, and the provision of childcare for grandchildren
Baby boomers', born after the Second World War, have been portrayed as selfish and individualistic, depriving subsequent generations of the opportunities they themselves benefitted from. This debate has ignored intergenerational transfers within families, such as provision of grandparental childcare. This article explores why grandparents choose to provide childcare for grandchildren while their adult children are working. Drawing on qualitative …
Gendered Ageing in the New Economy
No abstract available
Work, More Work and Retirement
This article reports the findings from a qualitative study in Scotland, UK, which explored, in some depth, older employees' preferences and expectations regarding work and retirement. Many expected to continue working, but various barriers frustrated those expectations, especially over-rigidity in employers' approaches. The research highlighted the diversity of factors that played a part, including gender, size of employing organisation, and heal…
Menopause, work and mid‐life
This article investigates how the complexity of life domains of menopause‐aged women creates a paradox of simultaneously challenging the ideal worker stereotype while being caught within it. The empirical setting of menopause at work acts to highlight how work, life, and health pressures are entangled in how women present themselves at work, through varying organizational and societal expectations of being ‘fit for work’. We draw on 80 semi‐struc…
Population ageing and older workers
Increasing employment of older workers (those aged 50 and over) has been proposed as a strategy to cushion the impact of declining and ageing populations. Focusing on Scotland, this article considers the various measures that have been put forward to counteract population decline, and reviews public policy approaches aimed at increasing economic activity rates among older workers. It is argued that the attitudes and behaviours of employers are a …
Introduction Themed Section
Across the industrialised nations, the labour market participation of older workers (i.e. those aged 50 and over) continues to attract considerable attention, as the numbers in employment decline and those who are inactive or retired increase (for a 21-country review see OECD, 2006). Against a background of concern over the economic and social implications of low employment rates among the over-50s, much public policy has come to focus on extendi…
Reforming State Pension Provision in ‘Liberal’ Anglo-Saxon Countries
There are good theoretical reasons for expecting pension reform in Anglo-Saxon countries to follow similar paths. Esping-Andersen (1990) famously identified these countries as belonging to the same ‘Liberal’ model of welfare, under which benefits, including pensions, are said to be residual and weakly ‘de-commodifying’, reducing individuals’ reliance on the market to a much lesser degree than elsewhere. Pierson (2001) has furthermore argued that …
Introduction
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Ageism and employment
This paper traces the emergence and evolution of the concept of ageism with respect to employment matters in the UK, and challenges some features of the emerging concept as defective and undermining of efforts to eradicate age discrimination in employment. Also revealed is some loosening in recent years of the association of the term ‘ageism’ with older employees. This latter observation informed the focus of our empirical work, which examined th…
Never the Right Age? Gender and Age‐Based Discrimination in Employment
Although UK legislation against age discrimination is required by December 2006, little is yet known about how ageism affects different age categories of employees, and the gender dimensions of ageism have also been neglected. Both issues were investigated by questionnaire survey, producing responses from over 1000 employees of a major UK financial services enterprise. The extent and manifestations of ageism were found to vary across age categori…
Employers' attitudes, practices and policies towards older workers
Despite policy emphasis on the importance of older workers (i.e. those aged 50 and above) to current and future labour markets, relatively little is known about the ways in which employers' attitudes, policies and practices influence their recruitment and retention. Drawing upon previous work by Taylor and Walker, this article reports qualitative research among employers across Scotland, which sought to investigate further the relationships betwe…
Population ageing and older workers
Increasing employment of older workers (those aged 50 and over) has been proposed as a strategy to cushion the impact of declining and ageing populations. Focusing on Scotland, this article considers the various measures that have been put forward to counteract population decline, and reviews public policy approaches aimed at increasing economic activity rates among older workers. It is argued that the attitudes and behaviours of employers are a …
Work, More Work and Retirement
This article reports the findings from a qualitative study in Scotland, UK, which explored, in some depth, older employees' preferences and expectations regarding work and retirement. Many expected to continue working, but various barriers frustrated those expectations, especially over-rigidity in employers' approaches. The research highlighted the diversity of factors that played a part, including gender, size of employing organisation, and heal…
Introduction Themed Section
Across the industrialised nations, the labour market participation of older workers (i.e. those aged 50 and over) continues to attract considerable attention, as the numbers in employment decline and those who are inactive or retired increase (for a 21-country review see OECD, 2006). Against a background of concern over the economic and social implications of low employment rates among the over-50s, much public policy has come to focus on extendi…
Employment Relations and the Health Service
Identity work and the 'unemployed' worker
This article seeks to explore how older individuals negotiate and manage their self-identity in relation to work while situated without paid employment. After reviewing the current positions of the older unemployed in the UK, noting the substantial overlap between age and disability, we turn our attention to conceptualizing the lived experiences of individuals through exploring 'identity work' as a means of understanding a non-working work identi…
Introduction
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Reforming State Pension Provision in ‘Liberal’ Anglo-Saxon Countries
There are good theoretical reasons for expecting pension reform in Anglo-Saxon countries to follow similar paths. Esping-Andersen (1990) famously identified these countries as belonging to the same ‘Liberal’ model of welfare, under which benefits, including pensions, are said to be residual and weakly ‘de-commodifying’, reducing individuals’ reliance on the market to a much lesser degree than elsewhere. Pierson (2001) has furthermore argued that …
Some Useful Sources
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Problematizing Gendered Ageing in the New Economy
Recent commentaries have highlighted the importance of age and ageing as holding significant structural and experiential implications for individuals both within organizations and situated in the larger social system of organizing.Contra traditional conceptions of age as linear, biologically determined and chronologically fixed, perceptions of age circulate and intersect with circuits of knowledge which appropriate organizational life, particular…
The domestic and gendered context for retirement
Against a global backdrop of population and workforce ageing, successive UK governments have encouraged people to work longer and delay retirement. Debates focus mainly on factors affecting individuals’ decisions on when and how to retire. We argue that a fuller understanding of retirement can be achieved by recognizing the ways in which individuals’ expectations and behaviours reflect a complicated, dynamic set of interactions between domestic e…
Gendered Ageing in the New Economy
No abstract available
Gender, age and flexible working in later life
In many countries economic and social concerns associated with ageing populations have focused attention onto flexible forms of working as key to encouraging people to work longer and delay retirement. This article argues that there has been a remarkable lack of attention paid to the role of gender in extending working lives and contends that this gap has arisen because of two, inter-related, oversights: little consideration of relationships betw…
The Older Worker
The roles that older workers play in labour markets has received a great deal of policy and academic scrutiny in response to economic crises and demographic change. As a starting point, this focus has paradoxically resulted in insufficient attention to older workers themselves. The article is thus concerned with refocusing the agenda for research onto the older worker. Building on an extensive literature review, four gaps in knowledge are identif…
Understanding older worker precarity
In policy debates it is commonly claimed that older workers are entering a period of choice and control. In contrast, Guy Standing's book The Precariat: The Dangerous New Class , published in 2011, argues that older people are increasingly joining the ‘precariat’, by taking low-level jobs to supplement dwindling pension incomes. We argue that many older workers, not just those in ‘precarious jobs’, feel a sense of ‘ontological precarity’. Pressur…
Extending working life and the management of change. Is the workplace ready for the ageing worker
Increasing longevity and the strain on state and occupational pensions have brought into question long-held assumptions about the age of retirement, and raised the prospect of a workplace populated by ageing workers. In the United Kingdom the default retirement age has gone, incremental increases in state pension age are being implemented and ageism has been added to workplace anti-discrimination laws. These changes are yet to bring about the ant…
A selfish generation? 'Baby boomers', values, and the provision of childcare for grandchildren
Baby boomers', born after the Second World War, have been portrayed as selfish and individualistic, depriving subsequent generations of the opportunities they themselves benefitted from. This debate has ignored intergenerational transfers within families, such as provision of grandparental childcare. This article explores why grandparents choose to provide childcare for grandchildren while their adult children are working. Drawing on qualitative …
Menopause, work and mid‐life
This article investigates how the complexity of life domains of menopause‐aged women creates a paradox of simultaneously challenging the ideal worker stereotype while being caught within it. The empirical setting of menopause at work acts to highlight how work, life, and health pressures are entangled in how women present themselves at work, through varying organizational and societal expectations of being ‘fit for work’. We draw on 80 semi‐struc…
Extending working lives and the subjective financial wellbeing of mid-later life workers
Despite a UK policy focus on extending working lives and delaying retirement, the number of workers aged fifty-plus in the workforce has declined post-Covid. The reasons for this decline are not entirely clear. Based on face-to-face interviews with fifty-four UK workers age sixty-plus, this study highlights the important role subjective financial wellbeing plays in the decision-making process regarding retirement timing. Findings show that the cu…
The long shadow of divorce
Divorce is increasingly common and can have a significant impact on later-life work and retirement. However, the lived experience of choice and control around divorce and its financial ramifications is not adequately understood. This article demonstrates how women and men differentially experience divorce as a long-run lifecourse factor, which can impact an individual’s scope for choice and control about working in later life, and how and when to…
Retirement, Disability, and Employment (17 works) · Political science (16 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Economics (13 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (12 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Demographic economics (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Migration, Aging, and Tourism Studies (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works)