Holman, D. orcid.org/0000-0003-4134-6238 and Walker, A. orcid.org/0000-0002-3169-2738 (2021) Understanding unequal ageing: towards a synthesis of intersectionality and life course analyses. European Journal of Ageing, 18 (2). pp. 239-255. ISSN 1613-9372
Abstract
Intersectionality has received an increasing amount of attention in health inequalities research in recent years. It suggests that treating social characteristics separately—mainly age, gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic position—does not match the reality that people simultaneously embody multiple characteristics and are therefore potentially subject to multiple forms of discrimination. Yet the intersectionality literature has paid very little attention to the nature of ageing or the life course, and gerontology has rarely incorporated insights from intersectionality. In this paper, we aim to illustrate how intersectionality might be synthesised with a life course perspective to deliver novel insights into unequal ageing, especially with respect to health. First we provide an overview of how intersectionality can be used in research on inequality, focusing on intersectional subgroups, discrimination, categorisation, and individual heterogeneity. We cover two key approaches—the use of interaction terms in conventional models and multilevel models which are particularly focussed on granular subgroup differences. In advancing a conceptual dialogue with the life course perspective, we discuss the concepts of roles, life stages, transitions, age/cohort, cumulative disadvantage/advantage, and trajectories. We conclude that the synergies between intersectionality and the life course hold exciting opportunities to bring new insights to unequal ageing and its attendant health inequalities.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Intersectionality; Life course; Cumulative disadvantage; Unequal ageing; Health inequalities |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Sociological Studies (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ECONOMIC & SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL ES/R00921X/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 03 Nov 2020 14:13 |
Last Modified: | 02 Feb 2022 16:39 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10433-020-00582-7 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:167315 |
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