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Research Team: Quality of Life Quality of Care

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Maree Porter

PhD Candidate
Ageing and Human Development Research Group
Faculty of Health Sciences
Cumberland Campus (G Block)
The University of Sydney NSW 2141 AUSTRALIA
Fax: +61 2 9851 9228
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PhD research project
Publications and presentations

PhD Research Project

Life After Work: A qualitative investigation of retired coal miners their wives and widows in a regional Australian industrial community
Supervisor: Dr Cherry Russell
To understand the meaning of retirement, one must understand the meaning of work. This thesis reports on the findings from a qualitative community based research study into the meaning of work and a retirement for 19 ex-coal miners aged 50+ from the Illawarra area of NSW. The study also addresses the shared gendered lived experience of 10 wives and four widows of ex-coal miners within this regional industrial community.

The Illawarra area has a long and embedded history of coalmining that has influenced the development of the community’s social fabric as a proud working class industrial region. Due to the environmental hazards associated with mining, as a group, coal miners are more likely to exit the workforce with work-related injury or disability, with the responsibility of their care falling mainly to wives and partners.

The findings of this research confirm that for the men and women of this industrial community, the investment in an ethos of productivity during their working lives, and continuing after exiting the workforce, affords them with a meaningful and active retirement, despite physical illness or limitations. The manifestation of this productivity was found through establishing, maintaining or creating new social networks and roles as ‘productive’ people within the coal mining industry during work for the men and within the community and family after work for both the men and women.

This study has attempted to demonstrate that despite ageing with disability, or illness, for this group of men and women it is possible to attain a positive, active, productive and therefore meaningful retirement.

Presentations and Publications

  • Publications
  • Joanne Bryant, Maree Porter, Sally Tracy, Elizabeth Sullivan (submitted) Caesarean birth: Consumption, safety, order, and good mothering. Social Science & Medicine.
  • Porter, M., Russell, C., & Sullivan, G. (2004). Gay, old and poor: Service delivery to aging gay men within support and residential services in inner Sydney, Australia. Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services. (16) 2, 43-57
  • Russell, C., & Porter, M. (2003) Single older men in disadvantaged households: Narratives of meaning around everyday life. Ageing International. 28(4), 359-371.
  • Russell, C., Touchard, D., & Porter, M. (2002). What's rapport got to do with it? The practical accomplishment of fieldwork relations between young female researchers and socially marginalised older men. The Qualitative Report, 7(1)
  • Russell, C., Charles, M., Porter, M., & Kendig, H. L. (2002). Housing of marginalised men growing old in the inner city: Research notes from the Australian Ageing Men's Health Project. Bulletin of People-Environment Studies, Autumn 19(Housing at the Beginning of the 21st Century).
  • Russell, C., Porter, M., & Touchard, D. (2001). Studying dangerous places: Safety and its construction as a factor in field research. Journal of Applied Health Behaviour, 3(1),
    15-23.
  • Bliss, M., & Porter, M. (1996). The Hunter transgender project. In J. Richters & R. Duffin & J. Gilmour & J. Irwin & R. Roberts & A. Smith (Eds.), Proceedings of the Health In Difference: First National Lesbian, Gay, Transgender and Bisexual Health Conference (pp. 48-50). Sydney: Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations & Australian Centre for Lesbian and Gay Research.
  • Conference Presentations
    Porter, M., “Life After Work: A qualitative exploration of the meaning of retirement in a regional Australian industrial community”, ERA 5th National Conference of Emerging Researchers in Ageing “Research informing positive outcomes in older persons”, Darling Harbour, Sydney. 21st November, 2006.
  • Porter, M., “Life After Work: A qualitative exploration of the meaning of retirement in a regional Australian industrial community”, Dean’s Research Seminars: Ageing Well, Faculty of Health Sciences, The University of Sydney, Cumberland Campus, Lidcombe. 17th May, 2004
  • Porter, M., “Single older men in disadvantaged households: Narratives of meaning around everyday life”, XV World Congress of International Sociological Association, Brisbane, Australia, 7-13 July 2002
  • Porter, M., "The intimate relationship histories of single, old poor men in inner-Sydney”, 8th Interdisciplinary Gender Studies Conference, Central Coast Campus, University of Newcastle, 29th July, 2001
  • Porter, M. “The Hunter Health Needs Assessment, Transgender Project”, Health in Difference Conference: First National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Health Conference, The University of Sydney, October 1-5, 1996.
  • Porter, M., "Homophobia in schools",Queer Collaborations 1996, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, 2nd – 8th July, 1996, and assisted with two workshops on “Sexuality stereotypes” and “Queers and Religion”.
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