From Striving To Thriving: How Facing Adversity across the Lifespan Can Foster Workplace Resilience

As women in the workforce age, they face a number of new challenges that intersect with previously experienced hurdles. These challenges are more pronounced in the case of older women, who may already experience discrimination based on other identities such as ethnic background or sexual minority status. This chapter illustrates how challenges for older working women such as ageism, lookism, and caregiving intersect with previously experienced hurdles and how these may be more pronounced for women who already experience discrimination based on race, ethnicity, country of origin, religion, disability, or sexual orientation. It provides key insights into resilience and the mechanisms by which adversity can promote late-life psychological well-being. The chapter then outlines pathways through which these challenges can facilitate growth and proposes a model of resiliency factors to inform gerodiverse women, professionals, and organizations about how to promote psychological well-being among our diverse and flourishing late-life female workforce.