About

Toni M. Calasanti is a Professor of Sociology at Virginia Tech, located in the Department of Sociology. Her research focuses on the intersections of age, gender, and social inequalities. She has authored several publications, including books such as Gender, Social Inequalities, and Aging (2001), Age Matters: Re-Aligning Feminist Thinking (2006), and Nobody’s Burden: Lessons from the Great Depression on the Struggle for Old-Age Security (2011). Her recent work explores intersectional approaches to age, gender, and sexuality, and she is currently engaged in NIH-funded research on same-sex partner caregiving, LGBT issues in later life, care work, bodies, and health. Additionally, her projects include examining ageism and images of aging in popular culture and research, theorizing age relations in relation to masculinity and femininity, exploring intersecting inequalities and retirement migration, and analyzing changing definitions of work and retirement.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Gender studies
• Social psychology
• Epistemology
• Gerontology
• Law
• Medicine
• Mathematics
• History
• Economics
• Labour economics
• Nursing
• Philosophy
• Criminology

Selected publications

• At Home in the City: Growing Old in Urban America At Home in the City: Growing Old in Urban America, by TorresStacy. Oakland: University of California Press, 2025. 368 pp. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 9780520288690.

  Contemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews · 2026-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Emotion Work and Spousal Dementia Caregiving: Influences of Gender and Sexual Orientation

  Journal of Health and Social Behavior · 2026-01-07 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  That heterosexual women caring for spouses living with dementia typically report greater stress than do men is often linked to empathic approaches to care, suggesting differences in identity-based stress appraisal. We examine this further, focusing on emotion work (manipulating one's own emotions to affect another's) versus feeling management (that targets the self) and gender and sexual orientation (GSO) identity. Using data from in-depth interviews with a nationwide sample (N = 69) of community-dwelling heterosexual, gay, and lesbian spousal/partner caregivers, we explore how GSO intersects to shape stress appraisal and emotion work provision. Thematic analysis reveals that identities centered around task completion resulted in feeling management engagement only (predominantly heterosexual men); emotion work was performed by those adopting an empathetic approach alone (mostly straight women) or combining this with a task orientation (typically gay and lesbian caregivers). These findings suggest how GSO might influence stress appraisal when challenges contradict caregivers' identities.

  PublisherDOI

• Gay and Lesbian Older Adults Caring for Their Spouses Living With Dementia: Positive Identity and Community at the Margins

  Research on Aging · 2026-03-18

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Research among heterosexual older adults finds that caring for a spouse/partner living with dementia is especially challenging. How this might vary by sexual orientation is less examined. Scholarship on older sexual and gender minoritized populations reveals the negative impacts of stigma and discrimination; we might expect this to exacerbate their caregiving challenges. But some scholars point to other, more positive outcomes: individuals untethered from heteronormativity can experience growth, value their identities, and form community. We explore these possibilities using in-depth interviews conducted nationally with 13 gay men and 16 lesbian women who cared for their spouses/partners living with dementia. We find that most expressed positive views of their identities and the characteristics that are often stigmatized; they also note the valuable lessons learned through their experiences of discrimination, particularly through the support and resources gleaned from their communities. They indicate that both of these influence their caregiving in positive ways.

  PublisherDOI

• Intersectionality and paradoxes of inequality

  2025-12-23

  book-chapterSenior author

  We define culture as distinctions between kinds of people, such as by gender, nation, race, sexuality, and age. At some locations of those intersections, inequalities combine to lift otherwise subordinate groups above other groups around them. We demonstrate this paradoxical outcome with recent research on retirement migration. Old-age migrants from nations with higher costs of living (mainly in the Global North) find that they can boost their status via migration south. Intersectional theory can forestall misinterpretations of such elevations of the status of old people, focusing us on inequalities rather than on reified Southern tendencies to cherish the old.

  PublisherDOI

• Series editors’ preface

  Policy Press eBooks · 2025-05-29

  book-chapterOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Old Husbands Caring for Their Wives in Malta

  2025-09-18

  book-chapter

  Literature underlines key gender variations in care work as women are more prone to provide care for multiple care recipients across their lives. Due to women’s predominance in care work, scholars have often overlooked the fact that in later life husbands do give care, they are just less likely to do so as they have lower life expectancies. However, when called upon, they do it and we need to pay attention to it and examine it. While theoretical and empirical research in this area has been growing exponentially, particularly in Anglo-Western and Northern and Continental European contexts, there remains a paucity of information as to Southern European trends. This chapter addresses this lacuna by reporting on a qualitative study that explores the lived experiences of community-dwelling old-husband carers in Malta. It explores the ways that manhood impacts how men approach care and how they view themselves within the care work context. The findings shed light on various facets including how care work goes against gender stereotypes and enduring cultural masculinities for men and how they experience this. It hints at how participants got past prevailing ideologies while simultaneously being influenced by traditional notions of masculinity relating both to their occupations and what they were doing in the domestic sphere. It seems that while some participants were ready to perform unconventional tasks behind closed doors, in public spaces they felt scrutinised by others and somewhat felt the need to uphold the gendered stereotypes that are typical of Southern European cultures.

  PublisherDOI

• Series editors’ preface

  Policy Press eBooks · 2025-09-18

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Self‐perceived advantages/disadvantages of one's gender and sexual orientation on spousal dementia caregiving

  Journal of Elder Policy · 2025-10-01

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Social sciences research has linked the experiences of caregivers to gendered experiences over the life course; a few studies have crossed these findings with sexual orientation, often introducing stigma and other social impacts. We directly asked caregivers themselves about the perceived influences of gender and sexual orientation on their caregiving experiences. Twenty‐three straight women, 15 straight men, 14 lesbian women, and 13 gay men spousal/partner dementia caregivers were interviewed about their caregiving experiences, including the advantages and disadvantages of their gender and sexual orientation in caring for their spouse/partner; these interviews were recorded, transcribed, and content analyzed. Four superordinate themes accounted for advantages, and the same number of comparable themes were found for disadvantages; together, these represent: empathy and emotional expression; bridging household management and relationship tasks; societal factors; and reference to bodies. The synthesis of these findings is illustrative; for example, straight women reported their emotional facility and household management histories as advantages; they also felt burdened and somewhat weighed down by both. Straight men similarly spoke of their emotional reserve as both an advantage and disadvantage—and similarly referencing household management (not trained in the former case, not prepared in the latter). Gay men and lesbians noted the stigma and discrimination that colored their caregiving experiences; they also saw how these struggles became strengths. These data help reinforce and animate existing interpretations of caregiver behaviors, add new nuance and perspective, and offer detail for policy and practice interventions rooted in gender and sexual orientation identities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Series editors’ preface

  Policy Press eBooks · 2025-05-22

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Gay Men as Caregivers for Spouses with Dementia: Intersections of Gender and Sexual Orientation

  The Journals of Gerontology Series B · 2025-02-16 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  OBJECTIVES: Despite the importance of spousal caregiving, and the increase in same-sex marriages concomitant to its legalization in 2015, few studies have examined the experiences of same-sex spousal caregivers. We use an intersectional approach to explore how gender and sexual orientation shape gay men's particular caregiving approaches for their spouses living with dementia. METHODS: We focused on a subsample of gay (N = 13) contrasted with straight husbands (N = 15) from a national study of spousal dementia caregivers. Data were obtained through in-depth interviews and analyzed thematically by a team. RESULTS: We find that sexual minority status and gender interact to shape gay men's caregiving approaches. Gay men's broader division of labor in households combines with experiences of discrimination based on sexuality and HIV/AIDS, as well as being a part of a same-sex couple to influence their caregiving approaches in unique ways. Specifically, they combine a task-oriented approach with concern for the personhood of the care receiver; bring strength and empathy borne of struggle; and what they feel is a deeper understanding of the care receiver given their shared status as gay men. DISCUSSION: Our findings indicate that gay men's flexibility in divisions of labor results in variable sets of skills, resources, and identities they bring to and approach their caregiving. In addition, some of the many negative experiences borne of HIV/AIDS and discrimination are reframed as sources of strength and guide caregiving efforts. Together, these findings highlight the intersecting effects of gender and sexual orientation on spousal caregiving.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Chris Phillipson

  University of Manchester

  49 shared

• Thomas Scharf

  40 shared

• Marion Repetti

  HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland

  39 shared

• Neal King

  Virginia Tech

  26 shared

• Ilkka Pietilä

  University of Helsinki

  9 shared

• Hayden B. Bosworth

  9 shared

• Hanna Ojala

  Tampere University

  8 shared

• Kathleen F. Slevin

  7 shared

Labs

• Department of Sociology, Virginia TechPI