Lecturer Margaret Morganroth Gullette traced the painful story of workplace discrimination and downward mobility faced by the aging population in her lecture “Bummer: Boomer Women, Work and Love.” She was followed by Emily Fox-Kales who examined cultural narratives of gender, aging, and sexuality in her lecture “Sex, Love and Death in Malibu.” The two lectures were hosted by the Women’s Studies Research Center (WSRC) and took place at Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 16.
Both scholars spoke on issues affecting people, especially women, midlife and beyond. Gullette focused on the age wage curve. Over a normal working life, wages rise in youth and stagnate in midlife, and then fall. However, this does not affect everyone equally.
Margaret Morganroth Gullette is an internationally known pioneer in age studies, a cultural critic and award-winning writer of nonfiction, an essayist, a feminist, and an education activist. Her latest book “Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America” (2011), won a 2012 Eric Hoffer Book Award. A recipient of NEH, ACLS, and Bunting Fellowships, she is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center.
During her lecture, Gullette showed data that illustrated that men’s annual pay keeps increasing until about age 45, while women’s stop growing after age 37. Gullette expressed how worrisome this data was, considering that people are living longer and retiring much later than usual.
Gullette also expressed her frustration with the lack of attention over the issue of ageism to the crowd, most of whom were fellow scholars at the WSRC. “Overcoming ageism is the next important social movement of our time,” said Gullette. Fellow scholar, Fox-Kales, expressed a similar sentiment.
Fox-Kales is a clinical psychologist specializing in eating disorders as well as a feminist media scholar. She is a lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School and on the faculty of both Northeastern University and the Graduate Consortium of Women’s Studies, where she teaches cultural and gender studies with a focus on visual representations of the woman’s body.
During her lecture, Fox-Kales focused on sexuality later in life. According to Fox-Kales, after a woman reaches midlife she is no longer seen as a sexual being. She used the popular Netflix series “Grace and Frankie” to illustrate expectations of women in midlife.
In the clip she showed, the titular characters trying to get a bank loan to produce sex toys designed for older women, specifically for women with arthritis. They are met with obvious discomfort from the banker and are denied a ten-year loan because of their age. While the clip was tinged with humor, Fox-Kales stressed the issue of age-related discrimination.
The two lectures where sponsored by the WSRC Scholars Program, which offers events and a lecture series for the public. In 1992, the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Brandeis University opened its doors to academic scholars who were on leave from other universities, in retirement or working independently, conducting their own research and writing.
Through WSRC’s Scholars Program, artists and academic scholars explore women’s and gender issues, their work often culminating in books and presentations that are open to the public.
