Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
in the global South are often perceived as particularly vulnerable to
poverty, ill health, disability and abuse.
However, older people's active contributions to society, strong familial
responsibilities towards older relatives, and the respect they often com-
mand within age hierarchies in many cultures and social institutions
highlight the dangers of constructing older people as a passive, homoge-
neous vulnerable group. Older people are a diverse group whose experi-
ences and living conditions are shaped by gender, class, age, health and
disability, ethnicity, religion, rural and urban location, among other fac-
tors. The 'feminization of ageing' has been highlighted as a particular
concern in the global South. The older population is comprised of more
women than men due to women's greater longevity and rising life
expectancy among surviving older women (Zelenev, 2008). Women are
often more vulnerable to poverty, violence and abuse in older age than
men, are more likely to live alone or in skipped generation households
(comprised solely of older people and children), to engage in physically
demanding work in subsistence agriculture and domestic and care work
in rural areas, to have limited access to physical assets, and to have low
levels of literacy which restrict their livelihood options and participation
in the labour market (United Nations, 2005).
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The Life-Course, Care and
Intergenerational Relations
The socially constructed, relational nature of 'age' has been increas-
ingly recognized in the social sciences in recent years (Hockey and
James, 2003; Hopkins and Pain, 2007). In parallel with critiques of the
use of strict age-based definitions of children and youth in international
development and rights discourses (see Chapter 4.2), commentators
have highlighted the problematic nature of the United Nations' chrono-
logical age-based definition of older people as all those aged 60 years or
more (Lloyd-Sherlock, 2004). Understandings of older age and genera-
tional relations may vary significantly in different socio-economic, cul-
tural and political contexts. Zelenev raises the question,
Does a specific age - such as 60 or even 65 - represent a realistic threshold
(contrary to a purely statistical approach) for defining a certain population
cohort as 'older persons'? Or are other criteria more appropriate for con-
temporary society, given the conditions in which people live? (2008: 5)
