ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how older women's identities are socially constructed, and in particular how they can be influenced by institutional intervention. It shows how age categories are used by older women in identity work in the course of ordinary activities. The chapter explains institutional intervention creates new opportunities for women's active participation and protagonism, it imposes in the other instance the institutional agenda and its aims and procedures on older women's order of priorities and understanding of the issues at hand. It explores the effects of institutional intervention in relation to the production of older women's social identities. In the ethnomethodological perspective, identity is understood as an interactional accomplishment, negotiated and achieved by members in the course of ordinary events, as constitutive features of their social encounters. The chapter examines how age categories are treated differently by the women when they are institutionally relevant.
