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With the advent of social media, the media environment has become more participatory for its users, making it possible for older adults to produce content for social media and be agential in online spaces. This article observes a group of older women known as Activist Grannies (Aktivistimummot in Finnish) and 60+ Finnish women bloggers who identify as "grannies" to discover what kind of agency social media potentially enables for older women. In addition, this article explores the cultural knowledge produced by older women's self-representations as activist grannies and "granny bloggers." I demonstrate that social media offers a space to make visible older women's lives and societal contributions. This visibility challenges ageist conceptions and conveys affirmative understandings of aging, such as viewing higher age as a source of strength. Social media also makes it more achievable for older adults to participate in current societal debates and to exercise political agency. This study expands the existing research on older adults and social media by adding to the scant knowledge about older women as content-creators and identifies the ways older femininities are constructed and negotiated online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To analyze and compare the experience of climacteric symptoms and their associations with sociodemographic and health-related characteristics in two cohorts of Finnish women aged 52-56 years, born ten years apart and not now or previously on menopausal hormone therapy (MHT).Study Design: Nationwide population-based time-trend study with a large number of participants (n = 1986 + 1988).Main Outcome Measures: The experience of climacteric symptoms was assessed by 12 commonly used menopause-related symptoms.Results: Women aged 52-56 experienced more moderate or severe symptoms and fewer mild symptoms in 2010 than in 2000. Being unemployed or inactive was associated with more severe symptoms (P = 0.007), but employment status had no effect on the relative odds estimates.Conclusions: The influence of the birth cohort and time-period effects as well as work-related factors on the experience of climacteric symptoms in women not now or previously on MHT needs further research, particularly since the change in the experience of symptoms found in this study occurred within only ten years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how women in Finland, the happiest country in the world in 2019, use new spiritual services and angels to cope with everyday life. Should not the high living standard and level of happiness decrease spirituality, as Norris and Inglehart suggest? The research material was collected using questionnaires in talks given by Irish mystic Lorna Byrne in Helsinki in 2011 and 2015. For the women studied, angels offer support and bring enchantment to their lives in a way institutionalized religion does not. While the high level of existential security decreases their religiousness, it opens these women up to other alternatives for new spirituality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of the variety of often welcome everyday enchantments and empowerment that lived religion may bring to an individual in his/her personal life, it may become problematic in a person's social life due to provoking tensions with significant others who hold different worldviews. This controversy necessitates the adoption of tactics and practices for adjustment and regulation, should that individual wish to enhance the benefits of religious enchantment and, simultaneously, maintain his/her position in the shared social lifeworld. This article argues that ritual theory, particularly in combining the notions of ritual framing and the subjunctive mode of ritual, offers a promising approach to researching this dynamic. The ritual studies approach helps shed light on the sometimes quite subtle ways in which moving in and out of the ritual frame makes it possible to regulate the often delicate balance of enchantment and disenchantment. This article examines the case study of women engaging in angel spirituality in Finland and the way they are able to navigate different 'religious' and 'secular' worlds. It argues that the dynamic combination of ritual framing and the subjunctive mode of ritual works as important possibility work in everyday life in a society which is uneasy about very strong expressions of lived religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate which patient characteristics are associated with the initiation of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in a cohort of Finnish women.Study Design: Responses to postal questionnaires distributed to a nationwide, randomly selected cohort of women in 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005 and 2010 were analyzed. The cohort members were aged 40-44 years at the beginning of the study. Information on hormone replacement therapy was received from the national prescription register. Women who started taking HRT between January 1, 1999 and December 31, 2011 were included and previous users were excluded from the analysis.Main Outcome Measures: Initiation of HRT was the main outcome measure. The following explanatory factors for predicting the use of HRT were examined: sociodemographic factors, personality, health behavior, physiological and mental symptoms, chronic diseases and use of psychopharmaceuticals. The associations between starting HRT and the explanatory factors were analyzed with single-predictor and multi-predictor logistic regression models.Results: Factors predicting that a woman would start taking HRT were: living with a partner, weak sense of coherence, BMI less than 30kg/m(2), heavy or moderate alcohol use, symptoms of hyperactivity of the sympathetic nervous system, climacteric symptoms and use of psychopharmaceuticals.Conclusions: Women with a good sense of coherence can cope with climacteric symptoms without resorting to HRT. Clinicians need to bear in mind the burden of menopausal symptoms on a woman's personal and working life when HRT is being considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The intensity of climacteric symptoms and their connection with sociodemographic background data were assessed among women who are or will soon be menopausal. Methods: A sample of 5510 Finnish women who were 42–46 or 52–56-years-old was selected to this ‘Quality of Life among Middle-aged Women’ Study and received a menopause-specific questionnaire. Results: Only 5% of the older and 36% of the younger women were totally asymptomatic. Altogether, 2% of the younger and 11% of the older women had severe climacteric symptoms. In the younger age group, a high symptom intensity was associated with living in town, having a low level of professional education, and being unemployed/laid off, whereas in the older age group, the experience of severe symptoms was associated with those having a couple relationship. Conclusion: Altogether 95% of women in the productive working age (52–56-years-old) surprisingly suffer from mild, moderate, or severe climacteric symptoms. Further even up to 64% of the younger women (42–46-years-old) suffered from similar symptoms. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]