Uncomfortable transit from caregiving to care receiving: Elderly women encounter the problematic reciprocity of caring

Abstract

As Korean society turns into an aging society, the elderly are becoming one of the new social risk bearers due to the lack of an adequate care system. This paper deals with the experiences of elderly women who are transitioning from care giving to care receiving, representing the last phase of the gendered circuit of caring. Approaching the issue from a feminist perspective, this ethnography of the elderly reveals the perplexing position of Korean women, in particular, elderly women, and shows that Korean elderly women are the locus of contradictions and dilemmas that arise when the family, the state and the market contest, upon which the assumptions of intimacy and reciprocity, male breadwinner ideology and ideal independent elderly discourse are nested.