Gender and Ageing: An Intersection to Explore

Maria Giulia Bernardini, María Isolina da Bove, Francesca Lagomarsino, Silvia Stefani

In 1970 Simone de Beauvoir published La vieillesse with the explicit aim of “breaking the conspiracy of silence” surrounding old age. The French philosopher deliberately used the term old age in order to reject the euphemisms that obscure this phenomenon and contribute to its collective removal. Decades later, ageing can no longer be considered a “silenced” topic: specialised journals, extensive research, and a growing presence in public debate—fueled by demographic ageing—attest to increased attention. Since the 1960s, in reaction to disengagement theories (Cumming & Henry 1961), which conceptualised ageing as an inevitable decline in well-being and a progressive withdrawal from collective life, the notion of successful aging (Havinghurst 1961) and its many variations—active aging, positive aging, productive aging, aging well—have gained prominence. These perspectives portray later life as a phase characterised by opportunities, social engagement, and physical and psychological well-being. In relation to ageing, as in the field of disability studies, a process is underway to move beyond viewing individuals as passive or dependent and to highlight their capacity for self-determination and active participation in social life.

The results achieved to date, however, appear ambivalent. This narrative, widely adopted across sectors, has undoubtedly generated positive effects. For instance, older adults are increasingly acknowledged as rights-bearing subjects rather than merely as persons with needs. The debate on a possible international convention on the human rights of older persons can be understood as a result of this shift, positioning old age as the latest “new frontier” of justice (Nussbaum 2017). In urban planning, scholars increasingly explore how to design age-friendly cities, making urban spaces concretely accessible to older people. In technology studies, research examines the potential of digital and assistive technologies to promote autonomy, while also acknowledging risks of discrimination linked to accessibility. Public policy initiatives increasingly focus not only on the health and social needs of older adults but also on relational and affective dimensions. Culturally, representations of older adults as competent and active subjects are increasingly widespread.

At the same time, the emphasis on active, positive, or productive ageing often reveals strong ties to neoliberal discourse, which tends to eliminate any form of vulnerability—including mortality itself, understood as a constitutive human fragility—while promoting productivity at every life stage and individual responsibility for managing dependency (Lamb 2017). Within this perspective, old age is often valorised only insofar as it reproduces traits associated with adulthood, especially productivity—a dynamic that has been described as new ageism (Walker 2012). Furthermore, active ageing paradigms frequently overlook structural inequalities (related to class, gender, racialisation, etc.) that accumulate across the life course and shape diverse ageing trajectories.

Despite the growing body of research on ageing, the intersections between ageing and gender remain underexplored. With few exceptions—mainly emerging from “critical” approaches within specific disciplines (e.g. feminist urban studies or research on violence, including digital violence)—older women remain an “unexpected subject” (Lonzi 1971), as old age has long been treated within feminism as an “et cetera” rather than a central focus (Calasanti, Slevin & King 2006).

A major exception is feminist gerontology. Since the 1990s, numerous scholars in social gerontology have recognised the potential of applying feminist frameworks to ageing (Ray 1996; Stoller 1993; Browne 1998; Calasanti 1999; Garner 1999). By recovering gender as a crucial analytic category, feminist gerontologists have shown that ageing experiences are shaped by political, historical, and economic forces that differently affect the life courses of men and women (Hooyman et al. 2014). Their research has highlighted several recurring features of women’s ageing in Western societies: the greater economic vulnerability linked to the unequal burden of unpaid caregiving work throughout the life course (Freixas et al. 2012), and gendered stereotypes of ageing that denigrate, constrain, and render older women invisible (Hurd 2011). Margaret Gullette (2004) famously described older women as “aged by culture,” emphasising the sociocultural construction of ageing. However, feminist gerontology’s focus on recovering the voices of older women—whose experiences had been largely ignored—has sometimes resulted in partial perspectives, leaving aside, for example, the nexus between masculinity and ageing (Hurd & Mahal 2019; King & Calasanti 2013), or the ageing of migrant caregivers involved in global care chains (Dossa & Coe 2017; Marchetti & Venturini 2013).

Contemporary intersectional feminisms are particularly well-equipped to expand and refine gender-aware analyses of this global phenomenon, opening multiple research paths. We hope that this special issue will become a space of dialogue, debate, and networking for scholars already engaging with feminist approaches in ageing research.

We welcome theoretical and empirical contributions addressing intersections between gender and ageing in relation to (but not limited to) the following themes:

• Sexuality and relationships
• Body, health, menopause and andropause, disability
• Theories, policies, practices, and institutions of care (gendering of formal/informal care work, ageing of care-workers, etc.)
• Socio-economic inequalities (poverty, welfare systems, institutional impacts, etc.)
• Successful/active ageing as imperative, framework, or site of negotiation
• Capability approach and ageing
• Ageism, discrimination, resistance practices, and public policies
• (In)accessible digital, smart, and robotic technologies
• Migration and racialisation processes (ageing migrants, parental migration, retirement migrants, etc.)
• Access to public and/or urban space
• Physical, material, symbolic, and structural violence
• Representations in media and across disciplinary fields (sociology, law, philosophy, psychology, literature, anthropology, etc.)
• Theoretical and/or methodological intersections between ageing studies and gender studies
• Access to rights and justice
• Contributions of legal norms and policies to recognition or misrecognition of diverse subjectivities
  
  

Submissions from all disciplinary fields are welcome—sociology, law, anthropology, philosophy, literary studies, psychology, and others—as well as contributions adopting interdisciplinary perspectives.

 

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