Grey power: age-based organisations' response to structured inequalities

In: Critical social policy: a journal of theory and practice in social welfare, Band 13, Heft 38, S. 23-47

Abstract

One consequence of the ageing of populations is the portrayal of elderly people as threatening the viability of welfare states; in particu lar, those who wish to justify cuts in public pensions depict the elderly as increasingly affluent and powerful relative to the rest of society. This article challenges such a view of elderly people in Britain as an ageist myth which serves to distract attention from the real sources of economic problems and from inequalities in elderly people's income and power which vary by class, gender and race. Because ageing affects men and women in different ways elderly women are not only poorer than men but also have lower social status, disadvantages Which are compounded for black women. Examination of publications of older people's campaigning organ isations in Britain and the USA shows that elderly people do not align themselves politically on the basis of age but of class. Although women participate at all levels in 'grey power', older peoples organis ations have largely neglected the issues of gender and race. Whereas older women in the USA have highlighted injustices to women and achieved some reforms, British older women have not yet mobiused as effectively.