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The Impact of the Relationship and Family Status in Retirement Age on Women’s Incorporation of Technical Devices in Their Everyday Life

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Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. Technology and Society (HCII 2020)

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Abstract

Older people and specifically women at retirement age are typically not associated with technological competence. However, some of them are avid users and little is known about the ways they incorporate technical devices in their everyday life. In this study, we depict how women’s relationship and family status at retirement age have an influence on their technology usage. Having interviewed women between 65 and 75 years old, we describe three types of lifestyles where our analysis follows the women’s approach to technical devices. The ‘GrandMother’ focusses on her family and local community, the ‘Half Couple’ emphasizes her husband and marriage and the ‘Independent’ concentrates on herself. Generally, the smart phone is used as an extension of their personal lifestyle and routines of everyday life: the GrandMothers direct their digital technology usage inwards, the Independents outwards and the Half Couples are split between those who use it sideways or not at all. For the GrandMothers, their technical devices are a facilitator of their daily duties and existing ties whereas the Independents have a strong self-motivated interest to use social media as an entertainment platform and as an extension of their interests. For the Half Couples, their mobile phones are either nice to have or simply unnecessary. Our study adds to the limited literature on older women’s technology usage and presents an understanding of how technologies are incorporated in a certain life phase.

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Acknowledgement

This article is part of Alina Gales’ dissertation at the Technical University of Munich in Munich, Germany. Alina Gales is supported by the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation as a PhD scholarship holder.

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  1. TUM School of Governance, Technical University of Munich, Arcisstraße 21, 80333, Munich, Germany

    Alina Gales

  2. Utrecht University School of Governance, Bijlhouwerstraat 6, 3511 ZC, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Eugène Loos

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  1. Alina Gales
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Correspondence to Alina Gales .

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  1. Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Qin Gao

  2. Chongqing University, Chongqing, China

    Jia Zhou

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Gales, A., Loos, E. (2020). The Impact of the Relationship and Family Status in Retirement Age on Women’s Incorporation of Technical Devices in Their Everyday Life. In: Gao, Q., Zhou, J. (eds) Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. Technology and Society. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12209. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50232-4_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50232-4_15

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