%X This article contributes to the debates about age-based practices of distinction that produce
stable notions about the subjectivities of members of social categories and the social
consequences of such categorisations for the subject. In Russia, a strong expectation that
grandmothers will prioritise helping their adult daughters with childcare and housework over
their careers and personal lives shaped the social position of the babushka, an unpaid family
carer dependent on the state and her children. When women can no longer maintain meaningful
post-pension-age employment, they see the babushka figure as the dominant option to model
their identities on. Drawing on 20 biographical interviews with women aged 60 and over, the
article explores their tactics of performing their ‘gendered age’ in various classed ways. The
babushka identity encompasses two broad strategies of self-presentation – taking control over
one’s life by emphasising that it is one’s deliberate choice to live as a post-professional and
post-sexual subject, and downplaying one’s own needs while contributing to the wellbeing of
others. The article shows that for older Russian women who face sexism, ageism and the
stigmatisation of poverty, denying their vulnerability to systemic marginalisation is a familiar
way of seeking recognition and maintaining their sense of self-worth. It advances the empirical exploration of the agentic component of vulnerability by revealing how the denial of
(inter)dependence is presupposed by the conditions of subject-formation.
%A Anna Shadrina
%K ageism, babushka, care, doing gender, gendered age, identity, older women, vulnerability
%J Ageing and Society
%D 2022
%L discovery10144721
%I Cambridge University Press
%T Enacting the babushka: older Russian women ‘doing’ age, gender and class by accepting the role of a stoic carer
%O This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.