Empowerment and disempowerment: a comparative study of afro-caribbean, asian and white British women in their third age

Grant description: The majority of older people are women who now expect more from life than they have in the past. Yet, we have little knowledge about what they regard as quality of life and successful ageing, with the information which is available tending to ignore ethnic minority women. This research compares the views and experiences of older British women from different ethnic groups. It is based on in-depth interviews with able-bodied women of 60-75 years from Afro-Caribbean, Asian and white British backgrounds. The research aims to evaluate their quality of life, how this might successfully be extended and the implications of this for national and local policies. It will explore what women find rewarding and what debilitating, analyse coping strategies and how these might be enhanced and develop a model of the levels at which intervention and support might be most effective