We all aspire to live many years of health and fulfillment. In fact, more and more people are reaching advanced age. The global population over 65 will grow rapidly over the next decade: from 1.565 billion individuals in 2024 (19.5% of the population) to 1.948 billion in 2034 (22.8%). And the number of those over 80 will increase by 29.3%. Demographic change is also accompanied by people enjoying better living conditions, more education, and fewer children. And yet, too often we continue to treat older people as if they cannot make their own decisions, as if they were minors. This is called ageism—there is also ageism for minors, but the most common is that of the elderly. And it is an increasingly evident social problem.
The term was coined in 1969, but despite the passing of years, it has taken a long time to bring it to the public arena. The UN considers that half of the population has ageist attitudes and states that ageism is, after racism and sexism, the third cause of discrimination. But it is a silent discrimination that is as widespread as it is little visible. It is present in all areas of life, from healthcare to the labor market and personal relationships. Without realizing it, too often we project the image of older people as weak and vulnerable beings. This is the pattern, and we automatically apply it, especially to women due to the combination of ageism and machismo.
It's common to see how in a hospital or nursing home—and in many other settings—staff treat patients or residents as if they were little children. There's a degree of humiliation, of belittling others. This also happens in banking institutions, where, using the excuse of the digital divide, older people—again, especially women—are often treated as if they were simply ignorant. No empathy.
Old age doesn't necessarily come at the expense of clarity. Often, the opposite occurs: experience is a degree. And even in cases where some form of dementia is present, the affected person doesn't necessarily become infantilized. In any case, when an older person has the capacity to make decisions, and if they want to, to take risks, it's not worth holding them back, belittling them, or belittling them. Individual autonomy must be respected.
One thing is the abandonment of parents or grandparents, with the consequent risk of unwanted loneliness—precisely this Sunday, the San Juan de Dios Social Work concludes a week dedicated to this issue—and quite another is excessive and ridiculously harsh guardianship. With life expectancies that have been lengthening and old age becoming active and healthy, ageism affects and bothers more and more people. Changing this bad social habit is another challenge for longevity.
Beyond specific humane treatment, which includes attitudes and language—expressions like "you look great for your age" or downright humiliating ones, like "She's a mummy!", are abundant—what's at stake is excluding older people from their rights and barring them from certain areas of social life. Thus, the challenge is to move from a welfare-based perspective—of course, without neglecting basic needs—to intergenerational inclusion in collective life.
