Flirting With the Grim Reaper: A Commentary on Aging and Faith

Abstract

ABSTRACT Age comes a wooing for each of us as we contend with mortality before our encounter with the Grim Reaper. The Grim Reaper is an enduring figure in medieval European Catholicism representing death, usually shown as a skeleton with a dark hood and robe holding a scythe. Black, linked to the black death or plague and black garments at funerals is epitomized in the dark garments of the Grim Reaper whose scythe is a symbol of agriculture, representing the harvesting of souls. Beyond the western Christian tradition, Hine‐nui‐te‐po is the Māori goddess of death, Yama is the Hindu god of death, and Mictecacihuatl is the Aztec queen of the dead, emphasizing how mortality is represented across cultures. A familiar image of death for danger is the ubiquitous skull and crossbones image. Death is an undeniable reality, and confronting mortality often stares one in the face as one gets older, with fears of abandonment and vulnerability. As populations age, organizations grapple with an aging workforce. An estimated 727 million persons were 65+ in 2020 and in 2050, based on better nutrition and medical care, this figure will be 1.5+ billion, with women being the majority. One‐in‐five women 60+ live alone, though there are differences among women from diverse faith groups. An aging gendered workforce stares organizations in the face. How can organizations serve as resource enablers to circumvent and recalibrate structural and symbolic violence against those who fall into the chronobiological marker of age generally 65+ or often 50+, to rearrange different registers of identity? Can organizations recognize wisdom keepers beyond images of doddering dears and wrinkled visages whose attractiveness may have faded in the eye of the organizational beholder? Worker related ageism has several facets which may be implicit or explicit with a plurality of aspects involving stereotypes, and age‐based discrimination in recruitment and employability. Adding to this plurality, the facet of faith and ageism in organizations becomes another delicate aspect to contend with. It is important to stress that the multi‐faceted concepts of aging and faith are both socially and culturally constructed and can be linked to those who are faith adherents as well as those who do not have a specific faith such as atheists, agnostics and those without a faith orientation. In this commentary, the aging–faith–gender nexus in organizations is signposted through four crucial dimensions for exploration and analysis: (1) elderly bodies and work; (2) gendered gerontophobia; (3) mortality and death; and (4) organizational cartographies.

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