Australian Journal of Adult Learning - Volume 59 - Number 1 - April 2019 - Learning to deal with freedom and restraints: Elderly women’s experiences of their husbands visiting a Men’s Shed

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Mimi

Explores how activities in Men’s Sheds shape elderly women’s experiences when their husband/partner becomes involved, focusing on empowerment, gender identity, and well-being. Based on five focus group interviews and eight individual interviews, the study uses content analysis guided by empowerment, gender-as-performative, and well-being concepts. Findings show self-fulfilment and self-sacrifice as central to understanding shifts in women’s empowerment, gender identities, and well-being, alongside reduced concern and eased guilt when husbands engage elsewhere.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages18

Reading Time45 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Men’s Sheds as a social movement

Research questions and study focus

Context: social contact, freedom, and role conversion

Methods and analysis

Interview design

Content analysis framework

Australian Journal of Adult Learning Volume 59, Number 1, April 2019 Learning to deal with freedom and restraints: Elderly women’s experiences of their husbands visiting a Men’s Shed Joel Hedegaard Helene Ahl Jönköping University This article explores the effects of activities in Men’sSheds on elderly women. Specifically, it investigates the opportunities that are made available for women when their husband/partner becomes active in the Men’s Shed movement; focussing on ‘empowerment’,‘gender identity’and‘well-being’. Five focus group interviews and eight individual interviews with elderly women were conducted and subsequently analysed through a content analysis, guided by the concepts of‘empowerment’,‘genderas-performative’and ‘well-being’. The result indicates that the notions of‘self-fulfilment’and ‘self-sacrifice’are central to understanding how men’s participation in Men’s Sheds has affected elderly women’s empowerment, gender identities, and well-being. When men visit Sheds, itempowers women and offers them a sense offreedom and independence due to the women feeling less concern for their partners and a concomitantly eased bad conscience for leaving the men home alone with nothing to do when the women leave the household to pursue their own activities. Simultaneously,‘Shedding’provides new avenues for women to reproduce traditional Learning to deal with freedom and restraints 77 feminine gender roles where they are primarily responsible for the socioemotional work within their marriage. This was demonstrated by the women’s extensive engagement by which they, practically and emotionally, prioritised their husbands/partners and their new Shedding experiences. Keywords: empowerment, elderly women, external well-being, internal well-being, gender roles, gender identity, Men’s Shed. Introduction Men’s Sheds are community-based workshops that offer men, primarily men beyond paid work, somewhere to go, something to do and someone to talk to. Men’s Sheds started in Australia in the early 1990s, and quickly spread to other Anglo-Saxon countries, including New Zealand, Ireland and the UK. Lately, Sheds have been established in Greece, Portugal, Slovenia, Germany, Malta, France, China, Kenya and the Scandinavian countries (Ahl, Hedegaard & Golding, 2017; Golding, 2015). Men’s Sheds constitute a social movement that is growing rapidly; with a yearly increase of approximately 20 per cent. In 2015, there were over 1,400 Sheds around the world (Golding, 2015) and two years later, there were over 2,000 Sheds ([http://mensshed.org](http://mensshed.org); [http://menzshed.org.nz](http://menzshed.org.nz); [http://menssheds](http://menssheds). ie; [http://menssheds.org.uk](http://menssheds.org.uk)). The Sheds have been found to greatly benefit older men’s learning, health and well-being and social integration.‘Shedding’has been shown tobe of importance to the development of a positive male identity, which focusses on responsibility, care for others, as well as for oneself (Carragher, 2013; Cavanagh, Southcombe, & Bartram, 2014; Golding, Foley, & Brown, 2007; Golding, Brown, Foley, Harvey, & Gleeson; Golding, 2011; Golding, 2015; Haesler, 2015; Morgan, Hayes, Williamson, & Ford, 2007; Wilson, Cordier, & Wilson Whatley, 2013). The keys to their success, from an organisational perspective, are: (i) Sheds offer men practical, gender-stereotypical activities (ii) Sheds are organised from the bottom up, so service providers are kept at arm’s length (iii) No women are present in the Shed (Ahl, Hedegaard, & Golding, 2017; Golding, 2015) 78 Joel Hedegaard and Helene Ahl There exists a fair amount of research into the effects that membership of a Shed has on the men who attend them. However, we wish to raise the following research questions: What impact does the attendance of men at a Shed have on their spouses? What do Sheds mean for the spouses, in terms of opportunities for learning and development? What impact

FAQs

What is the study mainly investigating about Men’s Sheds?

It examines how Men’s Shed activities affect elderly women’s opportunities and experiences when their husband/partner participates, with attention to empowerment, gender identity, and well-being.

How was the data collected and analyzed?

The study conducted five focus group interviews and eight individual interviews with elderly women, then analyzed the material using content analysis guided by empowerment, gender-as-performative, and well-being concepts.

Which ideas are presented as central to explaining women’s empowerment and well-being?

The findings indicate that notions of self-fulfilment and self-sacrifice are central for understanding how men’s participation affects elderly women’s empowerment, gender identities, and well-being.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Mimi