2023-12-25 09:47:36
Although the term ageism remains little used in France compared to other French-speaking countries, it has started to spread in recent years.
There is no consensus on its definition. For some, like the American gerontologist Robert Butler who coined the notion in 1969 by analogy with those of racism and sexism, it is a “process of systematic stereotyping and discrimination against people, because they are old”.
For others, likeAgeism Observatoryit designates discrimination based on age, whatever the age.
These two meanings are, however, not irreconcilable. We can, in fact, consider that unequal treatment according to age can concern both the young and the old, while recognizing that, in modern societies marked by increasingly rapid technological and social changes and by obsolescence accelerated knowledge, anti-old ageism is structurally accentuated.
The power of the unconscious
Ageism operates at different levels. First of all, it permeates representations, whether conscious or unconscious. The Harvard Implicit Association Test shows that the vast majority of people, including older people, tend to spontaneously associate positive qualifiers with young faces and negative qualifiers with old faces.
Ageism then takes an institutionalized form through social policy measures which open (and close) rights based on an age criterion and therefore create inequalities of treatment based on this criterion alone.
Consider the active solidarity income (RSA), which is reserved, except in special cases, for those over 25.
Let us also think of retirement systems, organized around age criteria which turn out to be ambivalent: on the one hand, they trigger the opening of protective social rights and, on the other, they can be factors of exclusion from the labor market, as when, in the 1980s, the possibilities of combining employment and retirement were severely limited.
Ageism operates on different levels – EddieKphoto
Institutional ageism can also be indirect when an apparently neutral policy is in fact disadvantageous for certain age groups (as is the case, for example, with the dematerialization of public services, which effectively excludes part of the population). elderly population of services to which they previously had access).
Finally, ageism is deployed through a whole set of individual practices which are based on different intentions. Some are poorly thought out and feed on negative, homogenizing and derogatory representations (as when young people are considered not sufficiently committed to their work and older people are incapable of adapting).
A depreciated word
Other practices demonstrate a sort of indifference to the needs and point of view of the youngest or oldest whose words are depreciated because of a presumption of incompetence.
Certain practices still fall under “benevolent” ageism: starting from a good intention and seeking to help people because of their age, they are no less discriminatory (for example when, on the bus or the metro, someone gets up to give up their seat to another passenger whom they perceive as elderly, arousing incomprehension, even anger, from the latter who feels treated like an “old person”).
Ageism remains relatively well tolerated in France and less often arouses indignation than racism and sexism. Its reality is even sometimes contested on the grounds that retirees are, in our country, rather well treated from an economic point of view, their standard of living being equivalent to that of working people.
However, it is important to emphasize, following the sociologist Juliette Rennesthat ageism actually plays out on another levelthat of cultural oppression.
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This article was produced by The Conversation and hosted by 20 Minutes.
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