Aging & Social Change: Eleventh Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Extending Working Life policies and in particular, the raising of state pension age is a common policy recommendation made by the OECD and adopted in many European countries in response tp population ageing. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that such policies may be problematic for certain groups of workers, including women those engaged in physically demanding and/or stressful work.This paper is based on a gendered, lifecourse analysis of interviews with 40 healthcare workers in Ireland, conducted in 2019/20. The impact of work-related health and how this interacts with other factors including gender, financial considerations and workplace and national policy on possibilities for extending working life is explored. The findings indicate that health can strongly constrain the capacity of many healthcare workers to remain in work past traditional state pension age. On the other hand, for many women, the increase in state pension age may push them to work for as long as possible to make up for time spent out of work due to caring responsibilities. The policy and research implications of the findings are explicated.