The analysis of Covid-19 pandemic process experiences of elderly women living alone from a gender perspective: The case of Göktasli district of Manisa Sehzadeler

With the prolongation of life expectancy and the decrease in death and birth rates, the proportion of the elderly population in the total population has started to increase all over the world. The fact that women live longer than men in the rapidly increasing elderly population shows that the majority of the elderly population consists of women. The fact that the majority of women in the elderly population have lost their spouses and then do not remarry or get divorced causes them to start living alone. The fact that elderly women living alone constitute a significant part of the elderly population reveals the importance of the experiences of these women. One of the factors that affect the shaping of experiences is social events. The covid-19 pandemic, which is one of these events, has been a process in which the experiences of the whole society differ. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the experiences with the legal regulations and restrictions made for elderly individuals differed and changed the daily lives of elderly women living alone. Therefore, the aim of the research is to understand how elderly women living alone are affected and how they experience this process, from the emergence of the first covid-19 case in Turkey, from the legal regulations made within the scope of measures for the elderly, and the discourses and practices ranging from loyalty to the elderly at the social level to age discrimination, since March 2020. In this context, the study consists of four parts. The first part is the introductory part of the study and it is the part that includes the purpose of the study and previous research, the theoretical background of the study, the research questions created in this context and the importance of the study. The second part consists of the literature on the development of aging studies, theoretical approaches to aging, and the relationship between gender and aging. The third section includes the methodological approach and research design of the research, while the fourth section includes field study and field findings and analysis from the experiences of elderly women living alone. This study, which was carried out using feminist methodology, focuses on elderly women living alone and deals with the various experiences of elderly women living alone with the legal regulations for the elderly in the pandemic process, with the gender dimension. The study, which was carried out with a qualitative approach, was carried out with 16 elderly female participants in the Göktaşlı District of Şehzadeler Manisa, and the elderly women living alone in the neighborhood sample were reached by snowball method and face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted. During the interviews, audio recordings were taken with the consent of the participant and data were collected. Face-to-face interviews were carried out in a way that would not risk the health of the participant, by following the social distance and mask rules. The data obtained as a result of the interviews were tried to be analyzed with descriptive analysis and narrative analysis methods. As a result of the analysis of the research, it has been observed that elderly women living alone have adopted and internalized traditional gender roles and inequalities from the past to the present shape their present experiences. Keywords: Sociology of Aging, Gender, Older Woman