Volume 6, Issue 12 (December 2019), Pages: 82-91
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Original Research Paper
Title: Sociological perspective on the well-being of the elderly Muslim women in Malaysia
Author(s): Novel Lyndon 1, *, Mohd. Nor Shahizan Ali 1, Mohd. Fuad Mat Jali 1, Azlina Abdullah 1, Nor Aisah Areff 2
Affiliation(s):
1Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi Selangor, Malaysia
2Department of Anthropology and Sociology, International Islamic University Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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* Corresponding Author.
Corresponding author's ORCID profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5049-8247
Digital Object Identifier:
https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2019.12.010
Abstract:
There are a growing number of studies on the aging society in Malaysia. However, many of those employ quantitative approaches, which yield important data but concentrate more on the experts’ standpoint for which researchers’ perspectives possibly outweigh the importance of the subjects’. Therefore, this study was an attempt to analyses the meaning of well-being from the viewpoint of elderly Muslim women. The findings revealed that the elders perceived well-being as having the opportunities to learn and to teach. Apart from that, the ability to perform good deeds and to avoid any wrongdoings as ordered by Allah meant that they had gone through well-being. They also believed that they had achieved well-being for which to some elders experiencing happiness and peacefulness as the means to identify it. Finally, in viewing the meaning of well-being to elders, religion could be the most significant dimension. As the subject of religion could be identified throughout the thesis, it shows how religion becomes the part and parcel of elders’ personal and collective lived experiences. Subsequently, activity theory rooted in symbolic interactionism and gerotranscendence seemed to be more applicable in explaining elders’ interpretations of well-being. In conclusion, the construction of their worldview on well-being would give a better understanding of elders’ future needs in the local socio-cultural environment. Thus, the efforts in policy planning and implementation could be expected to be more attentive to and effective for the Malaysian elders’ benefits.
© 2019 The Authors. Published by IASE.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Keywords: Malay Muslim women, Elderly, Abductive research strategy, Well-Being, Sociology
Article History: Received 5 May 2019, Received in revised form 5 October 2019, Accepted 7 October 2019
Acknowledgement:
It is appreciated and thankful to the SK-2017-002 Research Grant, led by Professor Dr Fuad Mat Jali, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia for the financial support given to the high impact of publication project. This article is part of a research grant EP-2017-034 MPOB-UKM Endowment. Thank you to the Center for Research and Instrumentation Management, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia for their continued support in conducting research and publications.
Compliance with ethical standards
Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Citation:
Lyndon N, Ali MNS, and Jali MFM et al. (2019). Sociological perspective on the well-being of the elderly Muslim women in Malaysia. International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, 6(12): 82-91
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