What Women Say About Growing Older

Women worry about getting older from the time they are teenagers, but they mostly worry in secret and alone. The WomenSpeak Project lets women speak honestly and freely about their aging concerns and find support to help them overcome their fears.

Is aging all in your head? Of course not

However, our perceptions of aging are in our heads, and it seems that women have widely differing ideas about when they are young, middle aged, aging or old. New research suggests that women who get more education and stay healthy perceive that they get old up to 10 years later than women who are less educated and less healthy!

Few studies have addressed aging in women, so Dr. Nancy created The O’Reilly Women’s Aging Inventory and set out to learn more. From 1999–2001 more than 1,000 women completed surveys about perceptions of aging, fear of aging, health concerns, dieting, exercise, plastic surgery and demographic factors. This research appeared in the American Journal of Health Behavior, June 2003.

These are important new findings of interest to women, families, counselors and therapists.

Aging Benchmarks

The age at which participants said a woman is young, middle aged, aging or old varies with her own age, level of education and health status.

The older the woman, the later she typically placed the young, middle aged, aging benchmarks. Women under 50 saw young as occurring around 26; women over 50 placed it around 32 or 33. This same pattern also appeared for the middle aged and aging benchmarks. However, women of all ages said old occurred somewhere between 70 and 80 years, with no trend relating to their own age.

The healthiest and most educated women were significantly more likely to say the aging benchmark occurs at a later age. Women with postgraduate educations were more likely to place the aging benchmark up to 10 years later than less-educated women. This might be because highly educated women actually live longer, enter the workforce later and may choose to work to an older age.

Those who reported excellent health also placed the benchmark at later ages. In addition, they said middle age occurred four to five years later than those who said they had health concerns.