Age Identities Flashcards
Bradley (1996)
Age as neglected dimension of inequality - elderly are one of most significant groups that compromise the poor. In Britain many of the elderly are seen as lacking the ability to contribute meaningfully to society which is percieved to have ‘passed them by’.
Oppenheim and Harker (1996)
Whilst 73% of male employees receive company pensions this only applies to 68% of female full time employees and only 31% of the many female part time workers.
Sontag (1978)
Double standard of aging, whereby women are required to be youthful through media careers and men aren’t.
Voas and Crockett (2005)
Old people are much more likely to identify themselves as being religious. The reasons for this is that they were brought up in a more religious era.
Amber and Ginn
Ageism against the elderly is reinforced by employment practices such as redundancy, unemployment and retirement.
Bradley
Old people are often seen as less suitable for employment because they are assumed to be ‘physically slow and lacking in dynamism’.
Beatrice Campbell in ‘Wigan Pier Re-visited (1985) and Goliath (1993)
Referred to adaptations some young people make in the absence of access to mainstream routes to adult status. She suggests some young women use having a baby to acquire status where as young boys, with little prospect of work, turn to daring crimes to show off their skills.
Vincent (1995)
Expenditure on the elderly as a proportion of the national income is relatively low in the UK. Increased financial demands could easily be met by cuts in other expenditure such as education and defense.
Taylor-Gooby (1996)
The number of pensioners increased from 6.5 million in 1951 to 10 million in 1991 without causing major problems.
Parsons (1954)
Viewed teenage culture as a transitional stage between childhood and adulthood, associating it with issues of transition and insecurity as young people sought to fulfill their social roles. Old age was considered as a time of isolation and loneliness. Receiving a pension created a dependency and with it came a drop in status.
Eisenstadt (1956)
Argued that differential age groups enable individuals to learn and acquire new social roles and therefore contribute to social cohesion and solidarity.
Parkin (1968)
Used concept of negatively privileged status groups in his works on ethnicity, a concept which could be applied to older people who have lost their position in the labor market, kept out by younger workers keen to work their way up the occupational ladder. All the glass ceiling idea that some people simply become too old to promote.
Carrigan and Szmigin (2000)
Advertising industry either ignores older people or stereotypes them as caricatures, who are decrepit, withering, physically ugly or losing their mind.
