Triple Standards of Ageing in Europe?

Manuela Stranges , Università della Calabria
Gessica Vella, Università della Calabria
Francesco Billari, Bocconi University

The existence of a “double standard” of ageing has been recognized since a long time in the feminist and psychological literature, at least since Susan Sontag (1979) argued that growing older, and in general the meaning of age, were more consequential for women than for men (Deuisch et al., 1986). Yet, during the last decades the salience of this question has become increasingly more central, given the growing share of older adults in the population and changes to family structure. Double standards of ageing are central in “ageism” a term coined by Butler, 1969, which refers to the discrimination against the elderly, which often manifests in negative attitudes. Ageing is a biosocial process where individuals progress from being classified as adults to being classified as old. The aim of this study is to explore the role of gender and socio-economic status in the timing of life perception in Europe. Our main questions are: is there a “double standard” of ageing in Europe today? Does this difference change by socio-economic condition and education, as one could expect from ai intersectionality perspective (Åberg et al., 2020)? We analysed data collected in Round 3 (2006/07) and Round 9 (2018/19) of the European Social Survey, which includes a module on the timing of life, in order to highlight the determinants of the perception of transition into old age. Our first and very preliminary results show that women in mean are perceived to become old before men, with men emphasizing these double standards.

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 Presented in Session 3. Ageing and its Consequences