Sexuality of Midlife and Older Women: Uses of Theory in Research

Background and Purpose: As a discipline, gerontology has been described as rich in data, but poor in theory. This lack of theory weakens the link between research and applied social gerontology and social work practice. Reviews of theories used in social gerontology at large have been carried out in the recent past. However, little work has examined the use of theory pertaining to specific subsets of the older adult population or narrower aspects of the social and personal lives of older adults. In particular, research on sexuality has tended to focus on the experiences of younger people. In order to better understand the state of theory in sexuality-focused gerontological literature, the primary goals of this literature review are to examine how theory is used and what theory accomplishes within literature on the sexuality and sexual lives of midlife and older women.

Methods: Guided by key tenets of the life course perspective and a critical feminist lens, this study involved a systematic search for literature published between the years of 2000-2015 in three large databases representing diverse disciplinary journals. Search criteria included theoretical and empirical articles published in English that focused on the sexual lives of mid-life and older women (age 45+). Twenty-one articles were returned which included a substantive or methodological theory and these articles serve as the basis of this study.

Results: All reviewed articles described the dominant culture narrative around older women’s sexuality as being one of asexuality or sexual decline in later life. However, each positioned their own work as counter-narratives, representing various theoretical reactions to the dominant narrative. The majority of both substantive and methodological theories were framed from a social constructionist or interpretivist orientation, arguing for the importance of balancing both women’s material and socially constructed experiences of their aging bodies and sexuality. Theories were also differentially integrated into articles based on their scale and epistemological assumptions.

Conclusions and Implications: While theoretical work is inconsistently integrated into empirical research, its uses have implications for the development of an overall narrative shaped and told by a body of literature. In research examining the sexuality of midlife and older women, substantive and methodological theories have been used to talk back to the culturally dominant, but empirically unsupported narrative of declining sexuality, supporting implications for health care and social service providers to acknowledge and affirm the diverse sexual narratives of older women as well as the ways in which socially constructed notions of sexuality impact the experiences of sexual activity in later life.