Aging experiences of men participants in a university of the third age

Abstract

In the last decades, several researches have highlighted the aging process of the population. In Brazil, according to the 2012 census, the percentage of people over 60 years old represented around 12.6%, with an estimated amount of 24.85 million Brazilians, with a trend towards increasing growth. Such a scenario signals the need to produce knowledge and practices with the elderly population that involves the demands and needs of older people, as well as glimpsing the vicissitudes of aging, taking into account, for example, issues related to gender. Of the various initiatives that have been implemented for the elderly since the middle of the last century, the projects of the universities open to the elderly, which are spaces of possibilities of different learning, socialization, intergenerationality and resignification of old age stand out. Thus, the general objective of this study is to analyze which senses the men participating in the "Open University of the Third Age" (UNATI) project of the Universidade Estadual Paulista, Assis campus, attribute to aging, aiming at understanding the transformations experienced in this process of aging and the contributions of the aforementioned UNATI project in possible changes and resignifications of old age. To do so, we will use a semi-structured interview script, addressing questions related to the profile of the research participants, the meanings attributed to aging, retirement, gender and participation in the university program with 10 men enrolled in UNATI-Assis. For analysis of the interviews, we will use the content analysis framework, as proposed by Bardin (2009). Thus, we understand that such a tool, when used to describe the content expressed in speech, contributes to the understanding of the significations and productions of meaning behind the lines and words. (AU)