It’s the hidden “ism”. Ageism is alive and well in New Zealand society, but it doesn’t conjure up the ire that racism, sexism, ableism and many of the other “isms” provoke.
Ageism refers to the stereotypes (how we think), prejudice (how we feel) and discrimination (how we act) towards others or oneself based on age, according to the World Health Organisation.
Younger people are generally blind to ageism. But it starts to rear its ugly head after the age of 50 when people can begin to find themselves “othered”, say academics and those in the fields of health, employment, linguistics, advertising and more.
Ageism is endemic in New Zealand culture. Read, watch or listen to the media, and anyone aged 65 and over is regularly homogenised as frail “elderly”, regardless of their physical and cognitive powers. People aged over 50 are often unemployed when they’d rather be working, and blamed for younger people’s woes. The irony of ageism, says Stephen Neville, head of nursing at AUT, is that it’s prejudice against your future self.
Covid has made matters worse, says Age Concern’s Hanny Naus. When the daily Covid deaths are announced, the general feeling from the public is that older people have had a long life and their deaths don’t count.
Yet each of
