Document Type : Research Paper
Author
M.A. Graduate of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran.
Abstract
This qualitative research attempts to study the lived experiences of elderly women living in nursing houses of Khorramabad city in the field of social exclusion. To do this, we have used grounded theory to analyze the causal conditions, intervening conditions and consequences of elderly women’s lived experiences of social exclusion in a deep way. The subjects were selected through purposeful sampling from the residents of Haj Seddique and Farzanegan nursing house in Khorramabad city. The data were gathered by way of deep semi-structured interview. The findings show that the causal conditions of social exclusions are: women’s lack of independent economic status (lack of financial support and loss of ability to work), decline of traditional solidarity in the family (decline of mothers’ authority, generational gap, the growth of individualism) and the transformation of lifestyles (transformation of home’s equipment, semantic change of family labor and the domination of gender bias). These causal conditions are activated through some intervening conditions such as: extreme pessimism and feeling of loneliness. The first one is characterized by mistrust in society and internal vulnerability; and the second factor can be observed in nostalgia for a golden past and the feeling of being forgotten. These two causal and intervening conditions, together, have strong consequences on the life and personality of elderly women, so that they feel that they are dis-embedded from the life-world and thrown into the way of gradual death. That is why they represent some symptoms such as silence/ aggressiveness, feeling of rootlessness and self-illness. Or, they believe in extreme fatalism and dying experiences. In a short way, we can say that living in nursing homes in Khorramabad city, which is semi-traditional and semi-modern, imply one main point: being cut off from the lifeworld and accepting gradual death. This qualitative research attempts to study the lived experiences of elderly women living in nursing houses of Khorramabad city in the field of social exclusion. To do this, we have used grounded theory to analyze the causal conditions, intervening conditions and consequences of elderly women’s lived experiences of social exclusion in a deep way. The subjects were selected through purposeful sampling from the residents of Haj Seddique and Farzanegan nursing house in Khorramabad city. The data were gathered by way of deep semi-structured interview. The findings show that the causal conditions of social exclusions are: women’s lack of independent economic status (lack of financial support and loss of ability to work), decline of traditional solidarity in the family (decline of mothers’ authority, generational gap, the growth of individualism) and the transformation of lifestyles (transformation of home’s equipment, semantic change of family labor and the domination of gender bias). These causal conditions are activated through some intervening conditions such as: extreme pessimism and feeling of loneliness. The first one is characterized by mistrust in society and internal vulnerability; and the second factor can be observed in nostalgia for a golden past and the feeling of being forgotten. These two causal and intervening conditions, together, have strong consequences on the life and personality of elderly women, so that they feel that they are dis-embedded from the life-world and thrown into the way of gradual death. That is why they represent some symptoms such as silence/ aggressiveness, feeling of rootlessness and self-illness. Or, they believe in extreme fatalism and dying experiences. In a short way, we can say that living in nursing homes in Khorramabad city, which is semi-traditional and semi-modern, imply one main point: being cut off from the lifeworld and accepting gradual death. This qualitative research attempts to study the lived experiences of elderly women living in nursing houses of Khorramabad city in the field of social exclusion. To do this, we have used grounded theory to analyze the causal conditions, intervening conditions and consequences of elderly women’s lived experiences of social exclusion in a deep way. The subjects were selected through purposeful sampling from the residents of Haj Seddique and Farzanegan nursing house in Khorramabad city. The data were gathered by way of deep semi-structured interview. The findings show that the causal conditions of social exclusions are: women’s lack of independent economic status (lack of financial support and loss of ability to work), decline of traditional solidarity in the family (decline of mothers’ authority, generational gap, the growth of individualism) and the transformation of lifestyles (transformation of home’s equipment, semantic change of family labor and the domination of gender bias). These causal conditions are activated through some intervening conditions such as: extreme pessimism and feeling of loneliness.
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