GENDERING THIRD AND FOURTH AGE THEORIES: THE ROLE OF THE HAG

摘要

In this paper I look at the third and fourth ages through a gendered lens. I show how negative representations of ageing femininity, which have a long historical lineage across a range of media, persist in a variety of new and old ways in contemporary times, directly influencing the way ageing is perceived today, whether successful or unsuccessful, healthy and productive, or its opposite, with particular ill effects on women. Following this introduction, I explore the problematizing of the third age, drawing on a range of texts, from policy to fiction, to illustrate how misogynistic approaches to older women are key in the shifting of the third age from an aspirational style to one epitomising unfair privilege. In the third section I turn to the fourth age, exploring its particularly gendered nature, and looking at the connection between medical classifications and tropes of the monstrous-feminine found in cultural representations such as movies and literature, which cumulatively shape the ‘burden of old age’ discourse. In the final section I consider how both types of representations are present in arguments about intergenerational injustice that underlie the framing of social inequality today in terms of ‘age wars’.