Anti-Ageism Movement

By Alan S. Gutterman

According to a global report on ageism issued in 2021 by the World Health Organization and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, every second person in the world is believed to hold ageist attitudes, which has led to poorer physical and mental health and reduced quality of life for older persons as a result of social isolation and loneliness, greater financial insecurity among the growing older population and cost societies billions of dollars each year in the form of excess annual costs for expensive health conditions and contributions to GDP lost as a result of discrimination against older persons in the workplace.  Ageism also intersects and exacerbates other forms of bias and disadvantage including those related to sex, race and disability leading to a negative impact on people's health and well-being.  Combatting ageism requires urgent actions along a number of fronts including policies and laws that address ageism, educational activities that enhance empathy and dispel misconceptions and intergenerational activities that reduce prejudice all help decrease ageism.  This book discusses a number of topics and initiatives relating to reducing the negative impacts of ageism in society including the elder rights and active aging movements, the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing; public policy frameworks; efforts to implement an international convention on the human rights of older persons; intergenerational solidarity; promoting positive and dignified images of aging; elder abuse; consciousness raising; the role that businesses can play in fighting ageism; aging-related research; and anti-ageism partnering among governmental agencies, civil society and the private sector.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ageism Project
• Release date: Feb 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201547608

Alan S. Gutterman

This book was written by Alan S. Gutterman, whose prolific output of practical guidance for legal and financial professionals, entrepreneurs and investors has made him one of the best-selling individual authors in the global legal publishing marketplace.  His cornerstone work, Business Transactions Solution, is an online-only product available and featured on Thomson Reuters’ Westlaw, the world’s largest legal content platform, which includes almost 200 book-length modules covering the entire lifecycle of a business.  Alan has also authored or edited over 80 books on sustainable entrepreneurship, leadership and management, business transactions, international business and technology management for a number of publishers including Thomson Reuters, Practical Law, Kluwer, Oxford, Quorum, ABA Press, Aspen, Euromoney, Business Expert Press, Harvard Business Publishing and BNA.  Alan has extensive experience as a partner and senior counsel with internationally recognized law firms counseling small and large business enterprises in the areas of general corporate and securities matters, venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, international law and transactions and strategic business alliances, and has also held senior management positions with several technology-based businesses including service as the chief legal officer of a leading international distributor of IT products headquartered in Silicon Valley and as the chief operating officer of an emerging broadband media company.  He has been an adjunct faculty member at several colleges and universities, including Berkeley Law, Santa Clara University and the University of San Francisco, teaching classes on corporate finance, venture capital and law and economic development,  He has also launched and oversees projects relating to sustainable entrepreneurship and ageism.  He received his A.B., M.B.A., and J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, a D.B.A. from Golden Gate University, and a Ph. D. from the University of Cambridge.  For more information about Alan and his activities, please contact him directly at [e-mail], follow him on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alangutterman/) and visit his website at alangutterman.com.

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Preface

According to a global report on ageism issued in 2021 by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, every second person in the world is believed to hold ageist attitudes, which has led to poorer physical and mental health and reduced quality of life for older persons as a result of social isolation and loneliness, greater financial insecurity among the growing older population and cost societies billions of dollars each year in the form of excess annual costs for expensive health conditions and contributions to GDP lost as a result of discrimination against older persons in the workplace. [1]  The WHO observed that ageism is an insidious scourge on society and seeps into many institutions and sectors of society including those providing health and social care, in the workplace, media and the legal system, citing widespread healthcare rationing based solely on age and systematically reduced access to workplace opportunities and training and education as people age.  Ageism also intersects and exacerbates other forms of bias and disadvantage including those related to sex, race and disability leading to a negative impact on people’s health and well-being.  The WHO argued that combatting ageism requires urgent actions along a number of fronts including policies and laws that address ageism, educational activities that enhance empathy and dispel misconceptions and intergenerational activities that reduce prejudice all help decrease ageism. [2]

In 2011, the UN Secretary General identified four major areas of concern regarding the human rights situation of older persons at that time: poverty and inadequate living conditions including lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation, unaffordable medicines and treatments and income insecurity; age-based discrimination; violence and abuse; and lack of special measures, mechanisms and services.[3]  The Secretary General described some of the key challenges confronting older persons and the work that still needed to be done in order to develop a comprehensive, targeted legal and institutional framework to protect the rights of older men and women[4]:

Discrimination:  Ageism is too often tolerated in societies across the world, and discrimination on the basis of age is often combined with other forms of discrimination on the grounds of gender, race and ethnicity, religion, disability, health or socio-economic conditions.

Poverty:  The single most pressing challenge to the welfare of older persons is poverty, characterized by homelessness, malnutrition, unattended chronic diseases, lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation, unaffordable medicines and treatments and income insecurity.  Exacerbating the problem is that despite their own poverty, older persons are often the main providers for the household and the primary caregivers for grandchildren and other family members.

Violence and abuse:  Violence against, and abuse of older persons—physical, emotional and/or sexual—and women in particular by someone in a position of trust, occurs worldwide. Violence and abuse is closely linked with disempowerment and discrimination, and often goes unreported and under-documented as older persons are reluctant or unable to report incidents.

Financial exploitation:  Older persons face multiple threats of financial exploitation, including fraud, arbitrary deprivation of their property, theft and expropriation of their land, property and goods, much of which is under-reported and under-documented. 

Health:  Older persons suffer discrimination in health care and tend to be overlooked in health policies, programs and resource allocation for necessary specialized services.  For example, there are few comprehensive health policies which include prevention, rehabilitation and care of the terminally ill. 

Long-term care:  Long-term care is often inadequate, affected by labor shortages and low quality services, and the situation is worsened by lack of legal frameworks to monitor human rights violations in long-term care facilities.  In addition, there are not enough resources and facilities to cope with the growing demand for long term home-care programs or geriatric services. 

Participation in policymaking and political life:  Mechanisms ensuring direct and informed participation of older persons in the design of public policy is lacking, as are means for ensuring accountability for integration of older persons as right-holders in society.

Work:  More work is needed on enacting, implementing and enforcing strong non-discrimination legislation in employment based on age.

Strengthening international legal protections:  In spite of all the challenges mentioned above, there is still no dedicated international regime (i.e., a legally-binding treaty) on the protection of the human rights of older persons.

A year later, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) noted that the situation of older persons presented a number of particular and urgent human rights challenges relating equally to civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights, pointing to age discrimination, long-term care, violence and abuse, social protection, adequate food and housing, decent work, access to productive resources, legal capacity and health and end-of-life support as being some of the most pressing areas of concern.[5]  The OHCHR also pointed out that the problems and challenges associated with addressing all of these areas were exacerbated by normative and operational gaps in the protections offered by human rights instruments and national legal frameworks and that [o]lder persons’ human rights are often invisible in national and international legislation and policymaking ... [and] ... the human rights situation of older person is rarely echoed at the international level despite broad consensus on their high vulnerability to neglect, isolation and abuse.[6]  The OHCHR has also said: Ageism harms everyone–old and young.  But often, it is so widespread and accepted – in our attitudes and in policies, laws and institutions–that we do not even recognize its detrimental effect on our dignity and rights.  We need to fight ageism head-on, as a deep-rooted human rights violation.

This book discusses a number of topics and initiatives relating to reducing the negative impacts of ageism in society including the elder rights and active aging movements, the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing; public policy frameworks; efforts to implement an international convention on the human rights of older persons; intergenerational solidarity; promoting positive and dignified images of aging; elder abuse; consciousness raising; the role that businesses can play in fighting ageism; aging-related research; and anti-ageism partnering among governmental agencies, civil society and the private sector.  For updates to this book, see https://ssrn.com/abstract=3901437.

Elder Rights Movement

The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) noted that the UN General Assembly has called for the establishment of national support infrastructures to promote policies and programs on aging in national and international development plans and programs and that the UN Principles for Older Persons encouraged States to incorporate rights of older persons to form movements or associations of older persons into their national programs. [7]  Efforts around an elder rights movement have their roots in the sociology and politics of social movements, which have been defined and described in various ways including a loosely organized but sustained campaign in support of a social goal, typically either the implementation or the prevention of a change in society’s structure or values. [8]  A social movement is formed when large numbers of people organize and mobilize to actively pursue common political objectives. [9]

Social movements generally begin among people who recognize that they have shared concerns regarding long-standing social problems and conclude that their rights and interests are not already being adequately represented.  Assuming that collective action and cooperative activities in pursuit of a common goal will be the most effective means for garnering the attention of government officials and the media, the movement begins the hard work of creating a formal and enduring organizational structure guided by leaders who often quickly become the face of the movement, such as César Chávez with the United Farm Workers.  A key strategic tool for any social movement is its communications network and obviously the emergence of digital communications technologies over the last few years has made it easier for fledgling movements to gain traction and effectively publicize their cause, recruit members, raise funds for their activities and organize events and other types of collective action.[10]

It has been observed that [t]he United States has a long tradition of social movements that have sparked major changes in political processes and government policies beginning with the abolitionist movement of the mid-1800s seeking to end slavery and then continuing with the first of many movements focusing on the rights of women: the push to grant women the right to vote that eventually culminated with the adoption of the 19th Amendment in 1920.[11]  Social movements can last for just a few months or continue for decades depending on the issue and the ability of movement leader to build and sustain the necessary organization and keep members engaged.  A list of social movements would be extensive and fuel debate as to whether a specific collective action qualifies for inclusion.[12]  One attempt at developing a timeline of US social movements through the 20th and early 21st centuries begins with the labor movement that gained attention and strength after the end of World War I and occupied a large swath of the economic and political debate from the 1920s to the early 1960s.  The early years of the labor movement saw well-publicized work stoppages, such as the Pullman Strike in 1925, formation of what would become large and influential trade unions (e.g., the creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1935), passage of groundbreaking legislation relating to the workplace such as the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) and the Taft-Hartley Act (1947) and deployment of collective bargaining as a strategy for securing workers’ rights.  The 1950s saw the beginning of the civil rights movement, which continued through the 1970s alongside the anti-war movement and eventually shared attention with other movements focusing on a wide range of issues and causes including women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, environmental justice, disability rights, racial justice and reproductive justice.[13]

In his brief introduction to the historical background for an elder rights movement, Walls mentioned that the first social movements oriented toward older persons developed during the Depression in the 1930s when many older people joined in efforts to implement pension programs and other elders’ benefits led by Sinclair (i.e., End Poverty in California), Townsend (i.e., The Townsend Plan, which would have provided a monthly pension of $200 funded by sales taxes) and McClain (i.e., the McClain Movement, which included a California and National League of Senior Citizens).[14]  However, these movements did not endure, swept aside with the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935, which established the Old Age and Survivors Insurance and Old Age Assistance programs and was, in Walls’ words, designed by professional social insurance reformers as part of Roosevelt's New Deal response to massive unemployment and poverty during the Depression ... [which included] ... public assistance programs, unemployment insurance, and retirement insurance.[15]

On July 1, 1958, Ethel Percy Andrus founded the American Association of Retired Persons, now known as AARP, to enhance the quality of life for older persons; promote independence, dignity and purpose for older persons; assume a leadership role in determining the role and place of older persons in society and improve the image of aging.[16]  The organization expanded the mission of the National Retired Teachers Association, which Andrus had founded in 1947 to address the economic challenges and health insurance needs of retired educators (the two organizations eventually merged in 1982).  The next significant legislative changes for the lives of older Americans had their beginnings in the 1950s when the Eisenhower administration began to study the needs of the aged, and liberal Republicans began to support the idea of health insurance for the elderly as an amendment to the Social Security Act rather than as a stand-alone law.  While there has not been a groundswell of support for national health insurance before that time, many in Congress were open to the idea, although the strong opposition of the American Medical Association to what it referred to as socialized medicine had to be taken into account.  The 1961 White House Conference on Aging shed a spotlight on a number of problems facing the elderly including access to adequate health care and social services and conditions in nursing homes and its final report included a health insurance proposal as part of the recommendations for legislative actions.  Months after the Conference, the National Council of Senior Citizens (NCSC) was established with the backing of the Democratic National Committee and large and influential labor unions including the AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers and United