Bridge employment in middle vs. late life for men and women: gendered social roles or life structures?

Abstract Utilizing longitudinal data from a stratified random sample of 15,433 retirees from Turkey, a country with uniquely large variation in postretirement work years, our study is the first to examine the phenomenology of middle vs. late life in postretirement work and demographic intersectionality in retirement. Synthesizing theory in the vocational psychology of retirement with industrial sociology of the life course, the social forces approach we advocate helps shed light on whether documented sex differences in bridge employment participation are caused by social bias or life structure. Results suggest that family and work contexts affecting the gender gap in bridge employment participation may be explained by differing communal and work factors inherent at the intersection of sex and age, and that life stage interacts with social and work opportunity structures very differently for men and women. Yet a nuanced look also points to some trends suggesting a social bias explanation.