The Old Women's Project


WHY IS AGEISM AN OLD WOMEN’S ISSUE? Back to Home Page

Ageism — the attitudes and practices that ignore, patronize, insult or trivialize old women — affects women of all colors, ethnicities, classes, sexualities, abilities. It is a form of sexism — very old, very powerless, very frail old men are seen as if they were women, just as gay men are sometimes treated with contempt as if they were women.

Ageism is a central issue for women, because as long as we are erased in the last third of our lives, we will continue to have perilous footing during the other two thirds.


IS AN OLD WOMAN WORTH LESS THAN AN OLD MAN?

The median income in the U.S. for men over 65 is $29,171. The median income for women over 65 is $15,615. Globally, 70% of the world’s poor are women, and old women are the poorest of the poor.

The Older Women’s League (to visit their site, click > owl-national.org) addresses the economics of women’s aging, as well as other issues of social policy. The Old Women’s Project works to change attitudes. Economics affects attitudes — a rich old woman, a rich Hispanic has at least a better chance of not being stigmatized than a poor one — but attitudes are also essential to economics. It’s much easier for me to hold you down economically, to ignore your needs, if I’ve decided that your group is lazy or stupid or somehow unworthy. It’s especially easy if I’ve helped you to believe that about yourself.


IS AN OLD MAN MORE GOOD-LOOKING THAN AN OLD WOMAN?

We all know the answer to that one. In a TV ad for Snickers candy bars, a young man flirts with an old woman. A message flashes on the screen: “Snickers Impairs Judgment.” The ad would not work if the sexes were reversed.

To be an old woman is to be reminded many times a day — by ads, product labels, workshops, books, magazine articles, TV — that you are repulsive, that every other woman will do anything in the world not to look like you, that looking like you is her personal nightmare.

“There’s such a narrow aesthetic on TV when it comes to women. With men, it’s all over the place. I think I am probably better off the older I get.” (Bradley Whitford, Josh on NBC’s “The West Wing”)


ARE OLD WOMEN MENTALLY INFERIOR TO OLD MEN?

You might think so. While the world is being run by old (white) men and nobody finds that surprising, there seems agreement that an old woman’s mind must be dull, predictable, boring.

Example: A couple of years ago, Katherine Graham died at 84. She was for many decades the publisher of the Washington Post — after her husband died — and had just published a much acclaimed and admired autobiography. She knew people and had status. On public television Michael Bechloss — an urbane liberal historian in his 50s — was remembering her: “Everybody’s saying she died at 84. I did not think of her an an 84-year-old woman. She wasn’t ossified.” (Ossify: to become set in a rigidly conventional pattern, as of behavior, habits, beliefs or the like — American Heritage Dictionary.)

Bechloss would never say: “I did not think of him as black — he wasn’t only interested in rap music” or “I did not think of her as a woman — she wasn’t ditzy and temperamental.” He wouldn’t be invited back to PBS. If Mike Wallace, also in his 80s, died, it would never occur to Bechloss to say: “I did not think of him as an 84-year-old man. He wasn’t ossified.”

Contempt for old women is so pervasive that most of us don’t even notice it in the world — or in ourselves. It just feels natural. It might help us to remember when contempt for people of color, women, lesbians and gays, felt just as natural.


DO OLD WOMEN, LIKE OLD MEN, EXIST OUTSIDE OF FAMILY ROLES?

Unless an old man is your own grandfather, he’s rarely defined by others that way. An old woman almost always is — even when she has no grandchildren. When Ann Landers, possibly the most widely read columnist in the world, died, the story on NBC began, “She was a great grandmother who...” The headline to an LA Times story about the veterans of China’s first all-women army unit reads, “Red Army Grandmas Soldier On,” even though not all the women are grandmothers and the story has nothing to do with children or grandchildren. The valiant Dann sisters, who in their 60s and 80s, have battled the U.S. government over the rights to their Shoshone lands, are described in the San Diego Union-Tribune as “anything but typical grannies.” In a feminist newspaper, Sojourner, the governor of Arizona was described as “a grandmotherly redhead,” though nobody describes Dick Cheney or Ted Turner as “grandfatherly” or finds it necessary to assure us that they are “anything but typical grandpas.”

Doris Roberts is introduced at an Emmy Awards ceremony as “a grandmother of three.” When will there be an awards ceremony that introduces Tom Brokaw or Jay Leno as grandfathers? (click to Why are Ageist Attitiudes Still Acceptable?)

We are turned into grandmothers at the oddest times, which allows people to diminish and patronize us. An 86-year-old woman survives a terrible automobile accident — her car is submerged for two days in a creek. On NBC’s “Today” show, Al Roker exclaims, “And do you know what kind of car she was driving? A Firebird!” and Katie Couric responds, “Go, Grandma! Go!”

The Old Women's Project
San Diego, California

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