In Canada in the 1980s-early 1990s, a subtle change started to take place in society as neoliberalism’s creeping ideological rhetoric entered the public domain. The mantra of “individual (or personal) responsibility” and “choice” could be found over and over again in everything from academic publications to the mainstream press. This rhetoric was accompanied by a political-economic shift that included the privatization and profitization of many of Canada’s social welfare programs.
The term ageism has had different interpretations
since it was first coined by Robert Butler in 1969 when he described “age
discrimination or age-ism [as] the prejudice by one age toward other age
groups”. A current definition provided by the World Health Organization in 2020
states that ageism is “the stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination against
people on the basis of their age” (2020). Ageism is widespread across the globe
and in most societies such as Canada’s it “is the most socially ‘normalized’ of
any prejudice and is not widely countered – like racism or sexism”.
Media has helped to foster ageism through the negative
stereotyping of older people, resulting in age discrimination in the workforce,
and the marginalization, and even exclusion,
of older people in their communities, which in turn “have negative impacts on the
health and well-being” of the older population.
An earlier Canadian survey produced for the International
Federation on Aging, The Revera Report on Ageism (2012), reflected the
information provided by the World Health Organization 2020- 2021. While any age
group can be the recipient of ageism, the two groups most singled out today are
the young and the old, but with the greater proportion of ageism focused on
older adults. The Revera Report found that ageism is the most tolerated form of
social discrimination in the country, more so than either gender or race-based
prejudice. It revealed that the most common forms of age discrimination are: 1)
treating seniors as if they are invisible; 2) acting as if they have nothing to
contribute; 3) assuming they are incompetent; and 4) allowing ageism to take
place in the workplace and housing. The Revera Report also found that in
general 89% of Canadians hold a negative view of aging, while Generations X and
Y are the most likely group to have formed negative opinions on aging, which
includes perceptions that people 75 and older are unpleasant, dependent,
grumpy, and frail (p.10). A more recent Revera Report on Ageism published
in May 2016, found that ageism “continue[d] to be widespread in Canada” and is
still the “most tolerated form of social prejudice in Canada, with more than
42% of Canadians citing ageism, which is double to that of racism (20%) and
sexism (17%)”.
Since the early 1800s, old age in our culture has been perceived
in either a positive or negative light based on a number of factors:
1)
“a ‘good’
old age was depicted by good health, virtue, self-reliance and salvation;
2)
a ’bad’ old
age reflected sickness, sin, dependence, decay and disease”
Victorian morality also associated ‘bad’ old age with sin, as well
as decay and dependence. Prior to the industrialization of the 1800s-1900s, a
primarily rural economy relied on experience that came with age, enabling older
(and healthy) adults to fall into the ‘good’ old age category that had value
within the society. The attitude toward ageing changed with the increasing
industrialization which relied on strength and speed, qualities found in young
workers that would increase productivity and profit.
At the same time, the ‘Cult of Youth’ developed in Hollywood in
the 1910s-1920s became ingrained in the consciousness of North Americans and
much of the Western world. This idea reinforces the belief that old age should
be avoided regardless of the consequences. Association with older people is
discouraged based on the grounds that doing so would “devalue” the younger
person in contact with the aging individual.
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