ABSTRACT
Institutional intervention has been pointed out as a catalyst to either social change or social reproduction. Some institutions have a positive mobilizing effect on women’s gender and age identification processes, others have a negative and limiting effect. The Action Project opened spaces for women’s initiatives; at the same time, however, those efforts were resisted in some of the Senior Citizen Centers, through a complex interplay of personal and institutional influences, in which members’ personal identities had an important impact. Awareness of the processes of identity production of elderly people would undoubtedly be very useful in the training of personnel working with them, showing in detail the effects of ordinary institutional practices in hospitals, nursing homes, and senior centers on identity processes. The great occurrence of mobility problems and psychological disorders among older women could be connected to such home confinement.
