Age Matters: A JASS Discussion Paper

How can we truly engage all generations in our movements? We all have something valuable to offer, no matter what our age, and yet the ageism that often blocks us has not been explicitly addressed. This paper is intended to provoke a discussion about age discrimination or ageism as a factor in building sustainable feminist movements. As JASS, we want to facilitate a cross-regional virtual dialogue about age relations – within our movements and in our lives as women – to ensure that our movements benefit fully from our multigenerational talents and wisdoms.

To spark the dialogue, I have written about some issues and questions. Please:
• feel free to disagree, explaining why;
• share your thoughts and add other issues, questions or examples;
• tell us about discrimination you have experienced based on your age (stating your age and context so that we can all understand, across different cultures and regions.)

From an amended version of this paper – together with your additions and discussions – JASS will produce a document on ageism that is both conceptual and practical.

Before reading the paper, pause to think, write, and discuss your own attitudes and experiences. For instance:
• What does your current age mean to you (advantages and challenges)?
• What do you experience as the benefits of working with women older than you? And the challenges?
• And with women younger than you: Benefits? Challenges?

Definitions

Ageism means a prejudice against a person or people because of their age – any idea, attitude, action, or mental or institutional structure that subordinates a person or group because of age.

Like other power relations (such as those based on race or ethnicity,) many forms of ageism are particular to women. Sexist ageism is any attitude, action, or structure that discriminates against female human beings because of their age. It includes any assignment of roles based purely on the age of a woman or a female child without regard to her preferences, abilities, and capacities.

Age discrimination varies depending on our cultural and/or spiritual context, socioeconomic class, sexuality, gender identity, ability, body size and shape, national and migratory status, race or ethnicity – and also depending on our age. These factors determine how age is felt, seen, and treated. In each moment of our lives, we all face different forms of ageism because we are women. A female human being’s age classification, unlike most other factors, changes as she progresses through her life cycle.

Seeing Age and Selling “Youth”

Around the world, the treatment of girls and women by age varies enormously. Some societies revere old women; in others, female babies and older women are abandoned or deprived. Globalized, youth-oriented culture is definitely ageist against female children, and against older and old women, but it harms young and adult women as well.

Ideas of age shaped by Western consumer capitalist patriarchy often clash with traditional and/or local views of female humans and age. In many cultures, women's status and power actually increases following menopause. For example, an elderly widow wields significant power in the family in certain Asian cultures. Post-menopausal women in some societies experience greater sexual freedom, the right to participate in ritual and in politics, and a decrease in the housework they are expected to do.

Adult and older activists generally have more power than their younger counterparts in our diverse women’s movements. But the youth-centered perception of older women is generally stereotyped and often negative. Such perceptions are readily apparent in language, media, and humor. Phrases such as “over the hill” and “don't be an old fuddy-duddy” denote old age as a period of incompetence. In jokes – a reflection of real societal attitudes – older women are usually shown as lonely, frustrated, and shriveled up. Even though women live longer than men on average, older men are perceived as being healthier than older women.

Youthfulness is a major incentive to sell products. We are surrounded by media messages about the need – especially for women – to stay young. At some point, hiding old age becomes impossible. Wrinkled skin and sagging bodies mark old age, and many people, young and old, view these signs with repugnance. Gerontologist Robert Butler found that most people, including old people, do not want to be around old people because it reminds them that we are all aging.

A growing group of industries profit from this fear of aging. Anti-aging skincare, a market that grew 63% between 2002 and 2007, is worth $1.6 billion in the U.S. alone. The anti-aging industry includes drugs and pharmaceuticals; vitamins, supplements, and minerals; plastic surgery and other cosmetic procedures; diets and exercise machines. Despite its claims, this anti-aging industry is definitely more about financial profiteering than about improving health. Aging “successfully” requires privilege, money, and leisure. Most marginalized women will not look young past a certain age, furthering their oppression. If you are a woman, you are already less valuable in our patriarchal societies. If, on top of being female, you are old, you have a much higher chance of being poor, homeless, and unemployed, not properly cared for, and abused.

Ageism on the Agenda

If most women do not want to be around old women, how can we talk about ageism in all its many forms? How do we build movements and processes that value girls and women of different ages?

One step is to understand ourselves as perpetual migrants from one age group to the next. Those of us who are now old were once young; none of us is exempt from aging. Unless we die at an early age, we will all experience ageism against older women, just as we probably all held those prejudices when we were younger, even if we were not conscious of them.

Then, we need to ensure that our movements are multigenerational. This is not simply about women of various ages being in the same movement. Partly, it is about building respectful relationships of trust, and of learning, and teaching based on a long-haul approach to movement building. But, as with other power relations, it is also about raising our awareness of age power relations.

Typical and mistaken responses:
• Older and old feminists tell young women to stop complaining and fit in, or to start their own women’s NGOs, and stop seeking validation from older feminists. Most young women are looking for solidarity, not validation. What young women need is to see that older activists maintain their political commitments in both word and deed. (Because of the NGOization of the feminist movement, it is also true that some young women view their involvement in feminism as just another paying job.)
• Both old and young activists think that young activists have nothing to learn from older or old activists because the world has changed so much. Patriarchal structures have been around for thousand of years. Misogynist attitudes and ideas have not gone away; they have just become more subtle or changed their forms. Rather than make the same mistakes, young women should build on what older feminists have already done. This requires that all feminists know and honor the history of our movements.
• Older and old feminists demand adherence to the politics and vision of their generation as the basis for any working relationship. Alternatively, younger feminists discard the politics and visions of older generations simply because they are not “cool” or “new” or postmodern enough. These attitudes block our personal and political development because they do not allow us to “see” what women outside of our own age group “see.”

Multigenerational Movement-Building

Because age is such an important factor in how we experience sexism, we cannot afford to have feminist or women’s movements that do not address age relations or, worse still, that reproduce ageism. No generation should be left out of our movement – we need to pay attention to how we exclude girls, and young, middle-aged, and old women. We all bear the responsibility for this, but so far it has been mostly young women who have launched intergenerational discussions, for various reasons:

• Many young feminists of this millennium began their activism in “youth movements,” so they tend to be aware of the impact of age discrimination on their lives. For older and old feminists, neither ageism nor age relations were much discussed within or outside of feminism.
• Young feminists and young movement builders have been targeted by international agencies and religious or development organizations keen to create and promote young leaders – sometimes because of a real concern that young women were not being heard; other times, distorting the understanding of gender power relations by focusing solely on age as a factor of discrimination.
• In the past few years, there has been a rush to create funds, programs, projects, and contests only for young women, and to publish manuals and books on young women’s rights. This valuable work is the result of young women’s activism, but risks encouraging the belief that ageism only affects young feminists.
• Older and old feminists have not been passionate promoters of intergenerational dialogues, in part because older feminists do not want to deal with the fact that they are old, and also because ageism has been reduced to only one of its forms: discrimination against young people.

The Challenge for JASS

What can we say about a movement that cares so little about women who gave so much? How can we have sustainable movements if everyone knows that at a certain age you are no longer welcome?

As a 61-year-old, Latin-American whitish woman, I am worried that our movements neglect older feminists, address ageism only when it is directed towards young women, and talk about the need for multigenerational movements only from the perspective of young women. For example, at the last AWID conference, I heard young and older speakers refer to older and old women as “not young,” showing that feminists seldom question the stigma attached to old age.

The stereotype of older women as inactive, unhealthy, asexual, and ineffective can also be a self-fulfilling prophecy. And yet, gerontological studies have found that women's self-image shows greater improvement with age than men’s does. Post-menopausal women become more assertive, less fearful, and less dependent. Our feminist movements seem unaware of these findings.

The challenge we face in this JASS initiative is to deconstruct our ageism and to develop an understanding of age relations similar to our understanding of gender and other relations. I hope we can do this with love and trust in our hearts, understanding that patriarchal structures prevent us from valuing each other as sisters.


~ Alda Facio, May 2009

Crossing the Line in Malawi

Tonight we decided to chill – candles, blankets, drinks, chips; creating the kind of accommodating and comfortable atmosphere that would allow the us to engage effectively with issues that are regarded as very personal, reflective, spiritual – a challenging process indeed.

To address issues of discrimination, especially those related to the politics of sex and sexuality, and sexual rights, we chose to cross the line, by working in the margins, and taking some significant risks. We adopted a diverse range of strategies to bring subjects which are often considered controversial and insignificant from the periphery to the centre of our discussion. LBGTI issues came into the conversation (lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender, intersex). The women looked disgusted, and some swore that they had never heard of such wickedness. However, one young woman shared that women had sex with each other in schools. So much so that they did not want to see boys during the holiday.

We continued to provoke this particular discussion until another participant shared that when her husband died, her grandmother advised her to get sexual pleasure from another woman. Slowly the truth emerged. The women spoke about how women pleasured each other sexually in the past and how they (some of the ‘participants’) also did it as they were growing up.

I believe that next time these kinds of discussions will be easier to initiate. It was an interesting conversation and we truly saw people crossing the line.

~ Hope Chigudu

Part three of a four part series. Next - The Flame that Will Build a Movement

Malawian women’s stories may surprise you!

Some of us wore expressions of a most unprofessional glee as Victoria, one of the women at the workshop, a teacher by profession, made us smile by sharing a story of how she has been using also the training acquired in the last JASS workshop to ‘disorganize’ her church. She demanded to talk about HIV and AIDS, thus ending the culture of silence and stigma regarding the subject. We used her story to invite the other participants to share their own experiences.

We heard how petite Doreen used the leadership skills she acquired in the Blantyre workshop to lobby the company, for which she now works, to provide seeds to women living with HIV and AIDS.

Asnat went to the District Commissioner’s office, bypassing ‘hidden powers’ and using the power within to demand to see the DC; she did. She demanded that seed coupons be given to HIV+ women.

Lillian ‘crossed the line’ (her words) by fighting for mobile clinics to provide ARVs for adults and children on the same day so that women don’t have to travel long distances, many times a week to access ARVs for themselves and their children.

Many women shared how they had used the power to and within to mobilize and make demands.

On advocacy – many of the women boasted that their leadership skills have been transforming their lives and those of fellow women and girls by challenging systemic inequalities (including service delivery, especially of agricultural inputs; resource allocation such as land; laws and policies).

We have asked the women to write their stories; we really hope that they will do so.

During yesterday’s discussion there was some concern that there has been a growth of people and organizations providing ‘cheap’ counseling services. These often draw on people from the local community (often women) who do tireless work in providing home-based care and community-level counseling and support. Most of these people tend to have minimal training and minimal support. Actually, the majority is affiliated with religious institutions.

There is little oversight concerning the content of counseling advice, which is problematic given that counseling can reinforce rather than challenge prevailing gender norms (for example, in the case of faith-based counseling, women spoke of counseling against condom use in marriage as well as dissuading ‘clients’ from using ARVs so that they depend on prayer).

In addition there is almost no discussion around creating more empowering counseling and psycho- social frameworks for women and girls. Considering how culture, tradition and religion are still being used to control women’s sexuality, perpetuate violence against women, and ensure that women remain subordinate to men, proper counseling is needed.

A case in point: some women confided that they had not had sex because they don’t have partners and also don’t trust men (so have backaches from lack of sex). The question that we discussed was a delicate one: if one has not had sex for ten years and just wants sex to recover from a backache, is love necessary and important? The aim was not to come to any conclusion but rather to leave it to each one of us to reflect.

The women understood the need to continue to interrogate the linkages between patriarchy, violence against women, denial of resources and service delivery and the feminization of HIV and AIDS, and to find ways of dealing with any of these critical issues in their plans (which they are working on as I am writing).

Inevitably, the discussion touched on sex workers. We concluded that irrespective of the moral and/or other judgments one might have about sex workers and the industry, in so far as human rights are indivisible, the abuse and denial of basic human rights of sex workers must be addressed.

~ Hope Chigudu

Part two of a four part series. Next - Crossing the Line in Malawi

I Am My Sister’s Keeper!

Jass in Malawi - 1st day

Our lives are written on our bodies.

Sisters!

Women living with HIV who are leaders in the AIDS movement in their communities in Malawi came together for the start of a four-day workshop organized by JASS. They started by creating startling and beautiful body maps. They did it without any artists to help. In groups of five, the women started by outlining their bodies on large sheets of paper. Each woman was drawn by the other women in the group. People stayed in their small groups to do this, sharing magic markers and other art materials. Through a series of imaginative exercises they added parts to the outline of their bodies. Then they added words, symbols, and pictures relating to their health, their history, their points of personal power, and their life goals. In this way, each woman recorded and shared her unique story of living with HIV or just of being. This was both a serious and playful process. (The Maps were taped up on the wall and enabled us to claim the workshop space as our own.)

“This picture and this project tell the story of my life: the hurts, pains, burns and the various opportunistic diseases are all written on my body. But it also tells the story of victory,” said Doreen.

Body mapping helped the women to make visible that which ordinarily is invisible to others and, sometimes, invisible to themselves. The process created a safe space where each woman spoke openly about her journey with HIV and other struggles. Women were also offered support from those who best understand their situation: other women living with HIV. We wove movement building into this artistic process by offering opportunities for the women to discuss their health in the context of the stories told in their body maps, and the need to organize and mobilize to form a bigger movement to demand, fight back and claim their citizenship. It’s difficult to fight back without hope. Through the mapping process and the discussions, one could see nuggets of hope surface. Although it brought up some bad memories and fears, the process was therapeutic and beautiful.

This morning, the collective organizing, mutual responsibility, and principle of sisterhood were reinforced by each participant taking on the responsibility of being another participant’s ‘guardian angel’ throughout the workshop. Standing in a circle, with no front or back, with no leader or follower, with no distinction between the participant and workshop facilitator but as women, we realized that however different our journeys, experiences, or possibilities in life, we are united in our common experiences as women who have vaginas.

We reminded each other today that this is a meeting where every woman has the right to life, protection, safety, dignity, and respect, irrespective of class, educational background, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or preference, and any other distinction. It was therefore hoped that each participant would leave with an awareness of their basic human rights and how to assert these rights, having shared an opportunity to learn about, claim and contribute to the women’s movement.

Since trust and confidentiality are critical at this meeting, participants were asked to reflect on and answer this question, “If you had a secret that you wanted to share, what kind of person would you share it with?” Some said that they would never share a secret but we agreed that life involves risk taking and we have to learn to take risks and to trust if we are to build a movement. At the end of the discussion, it was agreed that in order to share a secret, a person should be trustworthy, honest, non-judgmental, patient, caring, respectful, and understanding. We were all asked to embrace these qualities, and be the kind of person we would confide in.

During our discussion, sex workers were accused of being ‘bad women’ because they do not behave the way society expects ‘good women’ to. We paused and engaged in a conversation on what it really means to be a ‘good’ woman? (This happened in the last meeting too.) How easy is it for any woman to live up to society’s expectations? Who has the power to set these expectations? Should women strive to meet these expectations, even when they are oppressive and limit them from realizing their full potential? How do sex workers perceive themselves? These are some of the questions that the participants sought to answer. We discussed the dangers of labeling, self perception, and self empowerment. As participants explored the societal and internalized perceptions of what ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women are, they were able to identify the impact these have on them, as well as the ways they use these perceptions to discriminate against others. We made it clear that if we continue to divide women into good and bad, we shall not move together as women fighting for the same thing. A movement can’t be built on stereotypes.

As I am writing the participants are sharing their experiences regarding how they used the knowledge they acquired during in the last workshop and how they are building movements from where they are. The experiences are amazing, and powerful...a moment for JASS to be proud.

~ Hope Chigudu

Part one of a four part series. Next - Malawian women’s stories may surprise you!