Combatting Ageism

Third Age believes that ageism is both insidious and pervasive. It is insidious because many people are not aware of either their own ageist attitudes or the ageist attitudes of others. It is pervasive because it affects every sector of society including our laws, institutions, beliefs and attitudes.

Third Age combats ageism practically by turning negative stereotypes around and showing what positive role models older people can be. Third Age also draws attention to ageism as and when it encounters it. However, Third Age believes that to combat ageism most effectively we need first to understand what it is, provide examples of it, explain why it occurs, discuss how it damages, and offer suggestions as to how to combat it.

Accordingly, in its advocacy role for older people, Third Age offers the following reflections on ageism.

Understanding Ageism

Ageism is a prejudice against older people because they are old. Like other ‘isms’, such as racism, it lumps a large group of people together and reduces them to a negative common denominator. Ageism is extremely pervasive and permeates many aspects of society including government, the general public, and older people themselves.

The Employment Equality Act 1998 prohibits workplace discrimination on nine grounds, including age, though changing ageist behaviour and attitudes can be harder to monitor.

Illustrating Ageism

Ageist behaviour includes talking down to older people, according less weight to their opinions, needs and beliefs and taking their health and welfare needs less seriously. One example of health ageism is when a physical or depressive illness in an older person is put down to their age, rather than being viewed as a condition needing attention.

Ageist attitudes include simplistic categorisations of older people as one group rather than recognising their versatility as individuals. Ageist language as in ‘old folk’, ‘the elderly’, ‘pensioner’ creates a distance between older people and the community as a whole.

Ageism works by constantly offering the message that older people are of less value so that many people comes to believe it, however unconsciously, including older people themselves. These thoughts and ideas become part of our world view and become translated into how we think and speak about older people and act towards them. An older person may imbibe that atmosphere, see themselves as others see them, and become diminished. Their confidence can be eroded, their potential limited.

Explaining Ageism

Why is society ageist? Research would indicate that we stereotype older people because we fear old age. We fear the loss of physical and mental ability, of attractiveness, earning power, status and independence. We seek to distance ourselves from what we worry might be our own future when we are older. And so we create what we fear.

Also retired people can be marginalised because they have left the workplace in a society that tends to see paid work as the work of only value, thereby relegating older people to a less productive role. Also today’s celebrity-ridden world may equate physical beauty predominantly with youth.

How Ageism Harms

Ageism harms older people because it can produce policies and practices which negatively affects their well-being.

Ageism robs society as a whole because it can overlook the skills and experiences that older people offer and allowing them to be patronised creates a less just community

Ageism makes poor economic sense in moving people too rapidly from productive independence into a more dependent status.

Ageism harms us all because it denies the reality that one day we too will grow old. The kind of life I fear I may have tomorrow is more likely to happen unless and until I begin to challenge ageist attitudes today.

Challenge Ageism no matter what your age

• Challenge ageism by examining your own attitudes to people of all ages.
• Be open to friendships and relationships with people across the generations
• Don’t accept a lower standard of living for older people - just because they are older.
• Question policies and practices which seem to stereotype older people and make them less equal in society.
• Watch your ageist language, and question ageist attitudes in friends, family and colleagues.