Converging divergences in age, gender, health, and well-being: Strategic selection in the third age

The deinstitutionalization of careers paths and retirement, along with evolving gender and age norms, are creating increasing flexibility in social roles for both men and women at all phases of the life course. This deinstitutionalization is producing a period of life with few shared norms and few possibilities, called a "third age," around the time of cessation of one's career job but before the frailties of old age. The push for gender equality-along with a confluence of other experiences, options, and social forces,demographic, economic, and cultural-have transformed women and men's lives over the past several years and are producing a growing pool of healthy, educated, and skilled men and women in this third age at risk of being on the sideline of society. The third age represents a time of increased heterogeneity by age and gender-a time of converging divergences. Nevertheless, men and women in the third age are products of past age and gender-graded institutions and norms. People in, or moving toward, this emerging life stage bring with them existing disparities, and outmoded scripts about age and gender, producing asymmetries in power, resources, needs, and preferences.