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The article proposes a Gender Politics of Aging approach to the study of aging societies. The approach recognizes the feminisation of old age, ageism's roots in sexist discourse, and the need to recognise the role of politics in driving demographic debates. Drawing together arguments from feminist gerontology and political demography, the article argues that the intersection of politics and gender must be considered if appropriate responses to an older, feminised demography are to be produced. I conclude that the work of aging feminists provides a rich vein of research and praxis from which gender politics of aging approach can draw.

This article comments on the English Commission on the Voluntary Sector & Ageing, a voluntary sector-led initiative aimed at making proposals for voluntary sector leaders and charitable organisations on how to approach the ageing population. By examining the work of the commission, the review contributes to debates on the implications of population ageing for the voluntary sector.

This paper argues that the structured dependency thesis must be extended to incorporate political power. It outlines a political framework of analysis with which to identify who gains and who loses from social policy. I argue that public policy for older people is a product not only of social structures but also of political decision-making. The Schneider and Ingram (1993) ' target populations' model is used to investigate how the social construction of groups as dependent equates with lower levels of influence on policy making. In United Kingdom and European research, older people are identified as politically quiescent, but conversely in the United States seniors are viewed as one of the most influential and cohesive interest groups in the political culture. Why are American seniors perceived as politically powerful, while older people in Europe are viewed as dependent and politically weak? This paper applies the 'target populations' model to senior policy in the Republic of Ireland to investigate how theoretical work in the United States may be used to identify the significance of senior power in policy development. I conclude that research must recognise the connections between power, politics and social constructions to investigate how state policies can influence the likelihood that seniors will resist structured dependency using political means.

Demographic ageing is identified as a global challenge with significant social policy implications. This book explores these implications, with a particular focus on the pressures and prospects for ageing societies in the context of austerity. The book presents a carefully crafted study of ageing in Ireland, one of the countries hardest hit by the Eurozone financial crisis. Providing a close, critical analysis of ageing and social policy that draws directly on the perspectives of older people, the text makes significant advances in framing alternatives to austerity-driven government policy and neoliberalism, giving a refreshing interdisciplinary account of contemporary ageing.

This article uses feminist scholarship to investigate 'the elderly mystique' – which contends that the potential of old age is masked by a set of false beliefs about ageing (i.e. ageism) which permeate social, economic and political life (Cohen, 1988). The article presents a theoretical model which explores the extent to which institutionalised ageism shapes the trajectory of life after 60. The hypothesis under-pinning the model is simple: The challenge for ageing societies is not the average age of a given population but, rather, how age is used to structure economic, social and political life. An inter-disciplinary framework is used to examine how biological facts about ageing are used to segregate older from younger people, giving older people the status of "other"; economically through retirement, politically through assumptions about 'the grey vote' and socially through ageist stereotyping in the media and through denial and ridicule of the sexuality of older people. Each domain is informed by the achievements of feminist theory and research on sexism and how its successes and failures can inform critical investigations of ageism. The paper recognises the role of ageism in de-politicising the lived experience of ageing. The paper concludes that feminist scholarship, particularly work by feminists in their seventies, eighties and nineties has much to offer in terms of re-framing gerontology as an emancipatory project for current and future cohorts of older people.

AbstractThis article examines UK newspaper coverage during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic March-August 2020. A qualitative framing analysis of public messaging on age in five high circulation newspapers provides a detailed account of who is deemed to be at risk of dying from COVID-19. Newspapers represent older people as most at risk, with disability as a secondary factor. Reports on who is responsible, who is at risk, and who is to blame for deaths from COVID-19 are framed as issues of public health and generational fairness, with individual responsibility occupying a prominent role. We also find two counter-frames. First, in letters to the editor, older people's pleas for freedom are framed as a fight for their civil liberties. Second, newspapers praise 99-year-old Captain Tom Moore and frame his behaviour as a source of national pride. We identify this as positive ageism. We conclude that reporting across progressive and conservative newspapers reflects age-based stereotypes and paternalism towards older people. Public figures are represented as scapegoats or heroes, offering distraction from the less newsworthy fact that long-term under-investment in social care increased the risk of dying amongst the old and disabled during the pandemic.

Studies eliciting the views of children on ageing are rare, particularly those that focus on imagining a future self as an 'old' person and how this might be linked to current attitudes to older people. To address this gap, 2,365 children participated in an online survey which included questions on ageing. Findings suggest that children who hold negative views about old people visualise poorer outcomes for themselves at age 70. Implications of the findings are discussed in the context of an ageing population and the need to develop strategies to prevent the formation of prejudices against older people from an early age.