Publication Date: Mar 2023
RRP: $34.99
ISBN: 9781922633729
Format: Paperback
Size: 153mm x 234mm
Category: Biography, Women's Studies

Time of Our Lives

Celebrating Older Women

Maggie Kirkman


‘A celebration, a gift and a joy. Maggie Kirkman offers us the complexity and abundance of older women’s lives with warmth, compassion, intimacy and intricacy — life stories framed by the politics and policy implications of chronic cultural ageism layered upon age-old sexism. The result is important research and a compulsive read.’ Clare Wright

‘A must-read for all those women who refuse to go gentle into that good night’ Maxine McKew


Time of Our Lives presents the extraordinary lives of ordinary women in their seventies, eighties and nineties, challenging the stereotype of the helpless old woman who is nothing more than a burden.

This collection demonstrates the rich experiences of 20 women of diverse backgrounds, all of whom have achieved great things in older age. Mig Dann worked for David Bowie and gained a PhD in her eighties. Miriam Rose Ungunmerr Baumann, the first Indigenous schoolteacher in the Northern Territory, is showing young people about culture and community. Olive Trevor’s love of gardening led her to become a world expert in bromeliads. From Robina Rogan, a boatbuilder planning a voyage at age 82, to Rosemary Salvaris, a 76-year-old civil celebrant who’s taken up orienteering, these women show that learning has no age limit.

As the generation of Australian women who waved the flag for feminism enters retirement, let’s change the conversation around what it means to be ‘old’. Our ageing population is not a burden – it’s time to celebrate the contributions that older women make to our community.


Maggie with Hilary Harper on Life Matters

 


Maggie Kirkman

Dr Maggie Kirkman is a psychologist and a Senior Research Fellow in Global and Women’s Health at Monash University. She taught kindergarten children, children with hearing impairments and children with profound disabilities before attending university in her thirties – after...
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