The Queen at 95: What’s Age Got to Do with It?
The Queen is not letting her 95 years of age define herself. There is no fading away for this oldie. And doesn’t everyone love the fact. Her dissing of politicians as potential non-attendees at the Glasgow Climate Change Summit has won universal praise and attracted much favourable media coverage. Now, she has also declined to accept her country’s ‘Oldie of the Year’ award stating that she doesn’t believe she meets the criteria. Someone’s not following the older person script and just quietly fading away from public view.
The Queen’s decision to reject the ‘Oldie of the Year’ award acts as an important thought provoker on the meaning of age and growing older. Despite, the Queen continuing to lead a hectic calendar of social events and maintaining a heavy administrative workload, ask yourself which Company would even contemplate hiring a 95-year-old to handle a senior Corporate Affairs management role. Then ask yourself why not? In many ways the Queen is asking us to accept that age is only a number and should not define perceptions of an older person’s value or capability and ability to contribute to their community or workplace. This is a timely intervention as the groundswell builds to tackle the issue of ageism.
One of our greatest barriers to removing ageism from our community and work settings is our non-questioning approach to the meaning of ageing. We take ageing for granted as a physical process whilst ignoring that attitudes surrounding whether one is young or old are generated in our social world. Until we are willing to tackle the assumptions that influence our social views of the ageing process, moving the dial on eliminating ageism will prove challenging. Age designations such as childhood, youth, adulthood and old age cannot be age-neutral categories, as their dependence on cultural and political circumstances for meaning make them fluid and compresses ways of understanding a person or issue such as ageism.
My PhD research has revealed five specific social factors that profoundly influence our personal views of ageing, all of which help feed an ageism narrative within our everyday private, public and professional interactions.
· In western societies age meaning is dominated by the medical profession which positions age as a chronological marker and ageing as an unyielding process of biological decline and failing. Becoming older is associated with a cumulative loss of independence, productive capacity and cognitive capability. These dramatic consequences of the ageing process are certainly true in a general sense in today’s world for those 80 and above. Research doesn’t support these conclusions for those in their 50s, 60s and 70s who again in general are staying healthier and active for longer. There’s a lot of incredible education, knowledge, skill and capability available to public, private and not for profit organisations amongst these age-groups.
· An explosive growth in the anti-ageing industry reinforces a fear that ageing is a rotten experience with a terrible ending. Globally, the anti-ageing industry is big business with estimates of annual outlays more than $290 billion. The demonisation of the physical ageing process makes it easier to subscribe to an erroneous social view that ‘being young’ represents the ‘golden sunshine years’ of our lives. The American journalist Ashton Applewhite makes the great point that in our preoccupation with seeking ‘eternal youth’, we as a community are finding ways to avoid ageing which is preventing us in fact finding ways to embrace living.
· Our faith and trust in medical knowledge, has meant that alternative social science age perspectives have received little attention or been dismissed because of the largely qualitative nature of their research. Alternative views on a meaning of ‘old’ being defined by a person’s health status or social attitudes and behaviours attract little publicity. Notions of active ageing, productive ageing or enterprising ageing all of which defiantly challenge the accepted medical view of becoming old attract little public or business consideration as a positive way to reposition the ageing process.
· Historically, governments in the modern world have displayed a powerful aversion to their nations becoming labelled as an ‘old country’ which in geopolitical terms represents a political and economic death sentence through emasculation of national power. The only option to preventing such a fate becomes a national obsession with maintaining a society reflecting an eternal youth characterised by vitality, a commitment to progress and an ability for continual rejuvenation. This skewed political view is in part challenged by emerging research suggesting ageing societies are no worse economically as no correlation has been found to exist between ageing demographics and slowed economic growth.
· Western society has internalised the three-phase life cycle model as a form of ‘social clock’ determining the ‘right’ time to perform particular social functions, for example going to school, starting a career, or retiring from work. The only problem is that this model reflects assumptions of a time now considered an historical relic where divorce rates were low, couples had their families during their early 20s, steady state economic growth and jobs for life with regular pay increases were the norm and housing was affordable for the majority. A greater economic certainty made predicting individual futures a little easier from a financial and lifestyle perspective. However, we now live in a world where any sort of social, economic, work or financial certainty or security would seem a luxury. The traditional life cycle model has become increasingly irrelevant to how people are choosing to age and lead their lives. Yet many organisation people management policies and practices continue to reflect a life-cycle model mentality.
What this says about our understanding of the ageing process is that whilst there have been dramatic improvements in the physical aspects of human life, our social norms and conventions regulating age meaning are lagging. We’re now living longer than our parents and grandparents and remaining healthier for much of this longer life. We’re experiencing prolonged physical and intellectual capability benefits and for many of the Baby Boomer generation this is leading to actively challenging archaic socially institutionalised views of ageing and what it means to become old.
Peter Drucker, the late management philosopher, noted in his book Post-Capitalist Society that every once in a while, society crosses a major divide. “Within a few short decades, society rearranges itself – it’s worldview; its basic value; its social and political structure; its arts; its key institutions. 50 years later there is a new world. And the people born then cannot even imagine the world….into which their own parents were born.” The elimination of ageism through the transformation of ageing from a perceived negative to positive experience represents such a divide.
We are at the early stages of our transition toward a different vision of ageing involving the removal of ageism. For the record, I believe that 95 is old and comes with physical constraints. However, I applaud the Queen for challenging the medical view of ageing by her admission she feels younger than her chronological years. In this simple act, the Queen is highlighting that age is only a number and that the meaning of age should not be simply understood by chronology. Imagine how quickly ageism could be banished if we all followed the Queen’s example and just embraced living, free from social conventions of what being young or old are meant to represent. Each and every one of us has this power to change the trajectory of the ageing narrative in a positive way.
References
Applewhite, A. (2019) This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism; Melville House, UK
Drucker, P. (1993). Post-Capitalist Society. Harper Business. New York
Fineman, S. (2011). Organizing age. Oxford University Press. United States.
Hessell, T. (2021). ‘Talent and Age: How Do Human Resource Manager Meanings of Talent Influence Their Perceptions of Older Workers? PhD Thesis. University of Newcastle. Newcastle, NSW.
Rotman, D. (2019) Why you shouldn’t fear the gray tsunami, MIT Technology Review (August 21)
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/08/21/133311/why-you-shouldnt-fear-the-gray-tsunami/
Schalk, R., van Veldhoven, M., de Lange, A. H., De Witte, H., & Kraus, K. (2010). Moving European research on work and ageing forward: Overview and agenda. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 19(1), 76-107.
Simpson, M., Richardson, M., Zorn, T.E. (2012) A job, a dream or a trap? Multiple meanings for encore careers. Work, employment and society 26(3) 429 –446
Anti-ageing cures are big business. The $290 billion estimate is sourced from Ashton Applewhite’s already cited book (pg 121).
