Women worry about getting older from the time they are teenagers, but they mostly worry in secret and alone. The WomenSpeak Project lets women speak honestly and freely about their aging concerns and find support to help them overcome their fears.

What Women Say About Aging

Is aging all in your head? Of course not.

However, our perceptions of aging are in our heads, and it seems that women have widely differing ideas about when they are young, middle aged, aging or old. New research suggests that women who get more education and stay healthy perceive that they get old up to 10 years later than women who are less educated and less healthy!

Few studies have addressed aging in women, so Dr. Nancy created The O’Reilly Women’s Aging Inventory and set out to learn more. From 1999–2001 more than 1,000 women completed surveys about perceptions of aging, fear of aging, health concerns, dieting, exercise, plastic surgery and demographic factors. This research appeared in the American Journal of Health Behavior, June 2003.

These are important new findings of interest to women, families, counselors and therapists.

Aging Benchmarks

The age at which participants said a woman is young, middle aged, aging or old varies with her own age, level of education and health status.

The older the woman, the later she typically placed the young, middle aged, aging benchmarks. Women under 50 saw young as occurring around 26; women over 50 placed it around 32 or 33. This same pattern also appeared for the middle aged and aging benchmarks. However, women of all ages said old occurred somewhere between 70 and 80 years, with no trend relating to their own age.

The healthiest and most educated women were significantly more likely to say the aging benchmark occurs at a later age. Women with postgraduate educations were more likely to place the aging benchmark up to 10 years later than less-educated women. This might be because highly educated women actually live longer, enter the workforce later and may choose to work to an older age.

Those who reported excellent health also placed the benchmark at later ages. In addition, they said middle age occurred four to five years later than those who said they had health concerns.

Diet vs. Exercise

Interestingly, worries about getting older do not necessarily prompt women to do the things most likely to improve their health. Those who worried about getting older were significantly more likely to diet but not more likely than non-worriers to exercise regularly. This was also true of women who were worried about their ability to care for themselves and their problems 20 years hence.

About half of the participants said they exercised regularly, generally three or four times a week. Those who perceived aging as occurring earlier were more likely to exercise, while those who perceived it to occur later were more likely to diet.

Weight Management

Only 6% of women mentioned their weight as a health concern, although more than half of the women said they monitor eating habits to control their weight and 36% of women said they diet.

Women with health concerns were significantly less likely to monitor their eating habits than women who reported excellent health. Only 3% of 1000 participants said they used exercise to manage their weight.

For women’s long-term success at aging, it is especially troublesome that those who do worry about aging adopt the behavior of dieting rather than exercise. This might indicate these women regard their weight as an appearance issue rather than a health issue. Whatever the reason, this is an unbalanced strategy because both diet and exercise are essential for long-term health. In fact, a National Institute on Aging study showed that exercise conferred more health benefits than a dietary approach did.

Plastic Surgery

Around 10% of participants, 91 women, had employed some form of plastic surgery or reconstruction. They reported 38 breast surgeries (27 augmentations, 11 reductions) and 37 facial surgeries. Tummy tuck or liposuction was next-most common, with 19 procedures. They reported 14 other miscellaneous procedures. The 91 women recorded a total of 108 procedures, indicate some had undergone more than one surgery.

Interestingly, one of the most significant correlations in the study occurred in relationship to breast augmentation. The younger a woman perceived the young benchmark to occur, the more likely she was to have undergone breast augmentation surgery. This suggests this surgery is associated with a desire to prolong one’s youth.
Facial and breast surgeries accounted for nearly 70% of all cosmetic procedures, likely a reflection of the aspects of women that receive the most attention from society

Health Status and Concerns

Higher levels of education and employment related to better health. Postgraduate women were most likely to report being in excellent health, whereas women having a high school or technical education were most likely to admit having health concerns.

Women who were unemployed were far more likely to express concerns for their health than those in professional or technical jobs. It was not clear why: did the unemployed have active health problems that contributed to their unemployment? Were they primarily concerned about a lack of employer health insurance?

Health Risk

Women misperceive their health risks for the most common causes of death and disability. This disregard of health concerns may have tremendous impact on our society as the population ages. Fewer than 4% of participants mentioned concern for the two leading causes of death for women (and men): heart disease and cancer.

Although it might not be surprising that respondents younger than 40 ignore health threats that may not manifest for another 20 or 30 years, nearly half of the participants were over 40 and one fourth were over 50. This indicates women are in denial about risks to their health that might actually interfere with successful aging.
“Women seem to blithely ignore their health risks, perhaps because they are so busy taking care of the needs of others,” said Dr. Nancy.