What is the main message of Women Rowing North?

The main message of Women Rowing North is about navigating the challenges of growing older with purpose and resilience.

How long does it take to read Women Rowing North?

The estimated reading time for Women Rowing North is several hours. The Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.

Who is the author of Women Rowing North?

The author of Women Rowing North is Mary Pipher.

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Women Rowing North Book Summary - Women Rowing North Book explained in key points

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Women Rowing North summary

Name: Women Rowing North
Rating: 4.2 (21 reviews)
Author: Mary Pipher

Mary Pipher

Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

4.2 (21 ratings)

17 mins

Brief summary

Women Rowing North by Mary Pipher is a guide for women navigating the challenges of aging. It offers insight and advice on how to cultivate resilience, joy, and meaning in later life, drawing on the author's personal experience and interviews with over 100 women.

Topics

Friendship Happy Inspiration Aging

Table of Contents

Women Rowing North
Summary of 6 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 6

What’s in it for me? Age with a flourish.

As a woman, the prospect of growing older might fill you with dread. In a society that prizes women for their youth and sex appeal, can you embrace a new, life-affirming identity as you hit your sixties and seventies?

Yes, you can! Let these blinks take you on a journey to uncover how, with the right attitude, growing older can mean becoming more active, passionate and engaged. Join cultural anthropologist and clinical psychologist Mary Pipher as she explains how to meet this phase of life with joy, courage and even bliss.

You’ll explore the issues facing older people, such as illness, caregiving and retirement. You’ll also discover how some women have used their abundance of life experience to tackle these issues and emerge warmer, wiser and happier.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why older women are invaluable to their local communities;
the real reason behind society’s rampant ageism; and
how serious illness can lead to transcendent bliss.

Ageism, particularly against older women, is common in American society.

Growing older can be alienating and challenging, especially for women. The author, now in her seventies, recently came face-to-face with this challenge when a little girl approached her in a park and sweetly asked, “Where do old ladies come from?”

This question might seem astonishing. But it’s not really that surprising, given the extent to which American culture excludes and disempowers older women. This alienation is so widespread that this little girl’s confusion is understandable. Consider how often older American women are portrayed negatively in popular culture. For instance, mothers-in-law are commonly the butt of derisive jokes or viewed as bossy, nagging nuisances. The word ‘witch’ is often used to describe older women, as well.

While sexist ageism overtly portrays older women negatively, this sort of prejudice manifests in more subtle ways as well, like in the total erasure of older women from popular culture. There is a dire underrepresentation of older people, and particularly older women, in American films. A 2017 study conducted by the Media Diversity and Social Change Initiative found that less than 12 percent of films that won an Academy Award between 2014 and 2016 featured older people. More shockingly still, older women were featured in close to none of them.

This discrimination against older people in Hollywood is a reflection of the prejudice endemic in American society – a culture that values youth and beauty, while fearing and denigrating the aged. This fear and hatred, known as gerontophobia, was highlighted in a 2012 study by the Yale School of Public Health. The study assessed the extent to which social groups on Facebook dedicated to the elderly expressed disapproval of older people in their group descriptions. The researchers found that nearly all of them used negative stereotypes about the elderly, often denigrating and infantilizing them.

Ultimately, unkind and discriminatory attitudes toward older people stem from ignorance. While older people know how it feels to be a child, a teenager and a middle-aged person, no other age group has experienced being old. Thus, younger age groups struggle to imagine the reality of advanced age and may lack empathy and understanding. Ageism may be understandable, but it’s still hugely damaging. And not just to the old, but to the young, as well.

Caregiving is both challenging and rewarding for older women.

In most societies throughout history, the job of caring for children, the elderly and the ill has fallen to women. In twenty-first-century America, little has changed thus far. Just like her mother and grandmother who came before her, the author and her generation of women were taught the importance of female sacrifice and encouraged to put the needs of others before their own.

For most older women, providing care for those around them is nothing new. It’s likely they’ve already spent half a lifetime looking after the needs of their children, helping neighbors, bringing casseroles to friends’ families in times of need and making hospital visits to sick relatives. However, as women enter their sixties and seventies, the demands of caregiving can suddenly seem overwhelming.

As an older woman, your happiness is in your own hands.

Marlene, another older woman the author spoke to, grew up poor and has remained in poverty. Divorced, living in subsidized housing and forced into a career she didn’t choose due to her lifelong epilepsy, Marlene could easily have let herself be miserable. But her life motto? “I choose joy.” Remarkably, Marlene reports that she is happy.

We might assume that Marlene’s humble circumstances rule out happiness. However, research by psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky has found that external circumstances only partially contribute to our overall happiness. Our genetics determine as much as 50 percent of how happy we are. The remainder comes down to a mix of attitude, behavior and circumstances. This research should speak to older women in particular. While it’s often not possible to change situations or events, we can alter our attitudes and behaviors.

Retirement is a great opportunity to make positive changes to your local community.

When Nora retired, she and her husband Roger wanted to give something back to their community. After realizing that their suburban neighborhood was lacking a local park, they started raising funds and seeking permission to create one. And after four years of organizing volunteers and marshaling resources, their park was ready. It will continue to serve the community long after Nora and Roger are gone.

Nora’s story goes to show that retirement doesn’t need to be a time of powering down. Instead, it’s the perfect time in your life to take action – and you can do that close to home. Working within the community is perfectly suited to older women.

Our friends are the solace of our later years.

Women have been working alongside other women for millennia, bringing up children together, singing together over campfires and grieving for the dead together. Today, women still seek each other’s friendship. However, in the twenty-first century, it can be difficult to maintain these precious bonds. Not only does catching up with friends often take planning, long-distance travel and commitment, but modern culture also places little value on sustaining meaningful, lifelong friendships.

In our earlier lives, we had work commitments and family to keep us busy and give our lives purpose. This often changes once we hit our sixties, when our children have flown the nest. We may be divorced or widowed, and our careers are behind us or soon will be. When these areas of life require less attention, we rely on our friends to bring hope, joy and intimacy into our lives. They keep everything in perspective, listen to us without judgment and help us laugh at our troubles. In other words, our friendships in later life give us the understanding, comfort and companionships that we need to flourish.

Our final steps on life’s journey can be both difficult and blissful.

When the author saw her friend Jackie, she was struck by how frail and thin she looked. Though she was not yet sixty, Jackie had terminal cancer. Sitting on a bench overlooking a peaceful lake, the two friends talked. As they did, the author had a realization. Jackie was not only suffering from heartache as she made the journey to her life’s end. She was also experiencing bliss.

Terminal illness and the last steps toward life’s conclusion can be a distressing time replete with pain, anger and worry. But this period of life also holds opportunities for transcendent contentment, joy and bliss.

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What is Women Rowing North about?

Women Rowing North (2019) explores how women can continue to flourish as they enter their sixties and seventies. Through poignant stories from real women’s lives, these blinks examine the possibilities for happiness, friendship and community engagement in the later stages of life.

Women Rowing North Review

Women Rowing North (2019) is a thought-provoking book that explores the challenges and opportunities of women navigating the complexities of aging. Here's why this book is worth reading:

With insightful anecdotes and poignant stories, it offers a realistic and relatable portrayal of women's experiences as they age.
The book provides practical advice on how to embrace the changes that come with aging, promoting resilience and self-growth.
It tackles important topics such as self-care, relationships, and societal expectations, making it a valuable resource for women at any stage of life.

Best quote from Women Rowing North

After all, ageism is a prejudice against ones future self.

—Mary Pipher

Who should read Women Rowing North?

Older women looking for inspiration
Self-help enthusiasts seeking fresh insights
Those interested in gender politics

About the Author

Mary Pipher is a clinical psychologist and author specializing in trauma, women’s mental health and the impact of culture on psychological well-being. Pipher has written several New York Times best sellers, including Reviving Ophelia and Another Country.

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