Age discrimination in access to services and goods: a first insight into the EuroAgeism project
The EuroAgeism project gathers 15 young researchers whose objective is to explore the concept of ageism from different perspectives. One of these researchers, hosted by AGE, studies how the existence or absence of national legislation to prevent age discrimination in access to goods and services actually influences how older adults experience ageism. With the project celebrating its first semester, time has come for a short update.
What did (or did not) research cover so far?
The issue of age discrimination in access to services and goods has been widely overlooked in research. Although there is plenty of literature in the field of health services, a substantial part of the research focuses on the exclusion of older people from clinical trials, and less on actual health service provision.
Only few studies address age discrimination in the case of financial services – mainly in relation to the dangers of fraud. A slightly expanded analysis can be found on transport services, in particular on the questions of “driving in old age” and the needs of older people in relation to public transport.
Age discrimination in access toeducation has so far hardly been systematically addressed. However, some studies critically explored the problem that work-related training courses are not or only restrictedly accessible to older workers. Other topics covering age discrimination in relation e.g. to housing or access to legal services have only received marginal attention.
Moving forward with our understanding of ageism
While the literature review confirmed the need for further research in the different topics, the coming months will be dedicated to identify and describe age discrimination. The research field covers Austria and Ireland where five representatives from some the most important stakeholders-organisation were interviewed.
The talks showed extremely different composition and structure of the landscape of stakeholders’ organisations in the two countries, with a stronger anchoring of the Austrian organisations, but at the same time with stronger political ties. These differences are likely to lead to different handling of age discrimination at policy level.
For more information about the EuroAgeism project or to discuss about age discrimination in access to goods and services, you can contact Stefan Hopf, PhD student of the EuroAgeism project hosted by AGE Platform Europe: stefan.hopf@age-platform.eu
Training School Tampere
From the 11th until the 16th of February 2019 the first out of three official Training Schools within the project took place in Tampere, Finland. Next to project workshops, presentations and a lecture on “Ageism in Society: Practices, Policies and Interventions”, the event also includes a well-received contribution by AGE Platform Europe’s Policy Director, Maciej Kucharczyk on human rights in older age.
