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This chapter analyses treaties adopted by states at the Council of Europe forum, as well as its soft law, in order to answer the following questions: how is ageism understood by this forum; what measures have been proposed to eliminate ageism; and are the soft law documents helpful for a pro-old-age interpretation of existing human rights treaties? Arguments are provided to suggest that the existing human rights monitoring bodies of the Council of Europe might have an important role to play in the elimination of ageism in Europe. The role of European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence and the Council of Europe’s soft law are examined, and the argument is made that this organization has a massive potential to positively affect the laws and policies of its members states in the area of protecting the rights of older adults, but that this is contingent on member states’ awareness and political will.

Age counts among the non-discrimination grounds that the European Union (EU) is equipped and mandated to fight based on its treaties. At the same time age discrimination is the only form of inequality that is widely accepted as normal, legitimate, and justifiable. This chapter argues that the EU is far from delivering its promise for a “society for all ages” and without discrimination. Despite a promising framework provided by its founding treaties, the EU has an asymmetric legal and policy response to the challenges of old age. This chapter discusses how the Union’s conceptualization of ageing and older people and its narrow agenda to alleviate ageism are susceptible to prejudice. Based on a substantive understanding of equality, it maintains that in order to tackle the structural barriers that perpetuate ageism, the EU needs to act in a wide range of policy areas, and human rights must be put at the forefront of such efforts. It proposes using article 25 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which enshrines “the rights of the elderly’” as the normative imperative on which a more substantive application of age equality needs to be based. A human rights-based approach can become the EU’s antidote to ageism as it guarantees an in-depth analysis of how EU law and policies affect the rights of older people and what further action is needed to materialize them, taking due account of both individual and public responsibility.

This chapter critically examines established attempts to counter ageism, highlighting how they have failed to include the so-called fourth age, and might instead contribute to further stigmatization of older people with impairments and care needs. Drawing upon models from disability policies, an will be introduced that could be used to combat discrimination and improve everyday conditions of older people in need of long-term care. In this chapter, the equal rights framework will call into question existing cases of “institutional ageism” whereby older people with impairments are excluded from government programs benefiting younger people with disabilities. Instead of acting as a normative reference group, as the standard that older persons may fail or manage to live up to, it is possible to use the third age as a comparative reference group. We argue that society should make available for older persons with impairments living conditions and lifestyles that are typical for healthy active seniors, that is, for the group of older people that are commonly referred to as constituting the third age. These conditions and activities should then not be regarded as normative, but as typical, and thus possible to refer to when defining social rights.

Contemporary societies allow interactions between three or more generations at the same time. However, the emergence of multigenerational societies does not necessarily guarantee the eradication of ageism or age-related stereotypes. In this new social landscape, the civic mission of higher education includes the expansion of the educational toolbox for future professionals with instruments devoted to improve communication between generations. In this chapter, we refer to the intergroup contact theory, which supports intergenerational contact between young and old, not as individuals of different ages who coincide in chronological time, but as members of a community from different generations, as it is framed in the generational intelligence educational model. After presenting the theoretical background, a particular intergenerational service learning methodology is proposed and a case study, developed at Fontys University of Applied Sciences and Summa College in Eindhoven is described. This methodology is based on instructing students, not only on technical contents of a discipline but also on developing communication skills between generations. This communication tries to empathize with the ideas, interests and feelings of other generations, potentially leading to a reduction of prejudice. The chapter ends with limitations and future proposals related to generational education as an effective tool against ageism.

In order to address ageism and potentially reduce its occurrence, it is essential to identify appropriate ways to research it. Ageism should be examined at the societal level and the individual level. It should be examined both explicitly and implicitly. Moreover, ageism is manifested towards others and towards one-self, thus both levels should be examined. Because ageism is manifested in the ways we think, feel and act towards age and ageing, all three domains should be assessed. Ageism has many theoretical grounds, which also should be incorporated when examining the phenomenon. This section presents both theoretical arguments and practical tools and best practices to facilitate research in the field of ageism.

As international researchers, Wilińska, de Hontheim, and Anbäcken give a reflexive personal account of conducting research on ageism in different countries and cultures. They argue that being physically away from your own culture is an opportunity to re-examine common assumptions about age and ageing and develop a more critical understanding of these issues in light of their varied manifestations in different cultures. To some degree, this chapter corresponds with Snellman’s chapter (; chapter 25), as it indicates ways to broaden normative understandings of ageism through exposure to views and perspectives that do not represent the majority view in one’s own culture

This chapter reflects on the normative, empiricist, and interpretive considerations researchers face in the process of researching ageism. The chapter is based on a doctoral dissertation that triangulated data, methods, and theory to explore how ageism is manifested and sustained in the lives of older people. Little attention has previously been devoted to the philosophy of science aspects explicitly related to ageism. An increasing number of ageism publications report on empirical data, but these publications are rarely explicitly related to epistemological and ontological questions. Consequently, there is a gap in what we know about the wide scope of challenges in researching ageism and in how we view and understand ageism in our world. Focusing on the different types of considerations researchers face is a way to show how the choices we are forced to make in the process enable us to or prevent us from making claims about the phenomenon of ageism. Delving into a wider study of epistemological and ontological questions while simultaneously examining ageism definitions and studies can hopefully guide future researchers to make better informed choices on a variety of ways to do research on ageism. Overlapping normative, empiricist, and interpretive contexts can be a way to identify novel research questions, design studies triangularly, and enable new knowledge about ageism, its origins, consequences, and practices.

In this chapter, we discuss the opportunities and challenges of researching ageism from a cross-cultural perspective. We discuss the complexity of exploring diverse ageist practices as performed in different parts of the world. We also reflect upon the socio-cultural backgrounds through which researchers filter the experiences of fieldwork and research on various enactments of ageism. The key tenet of our argument is that these two dimensions interact during the fieldwork to create unique frameworks that researchers apply in their studies.

We confront our experiences of researching ageism in Japan, Poland, Sweden, and West Papua to explore the notion that the socio-cultural context matters to the following aspects of ageism: diversity of ageist practices, societal images of later life, and the researchers’ socio-cultural understandings of ageism. We explore the position of researchers who, on the one hand, apply the privileged perspective of a stranger to their fieldwork, and on the other hand, are deeply embedded in their own socio-cultural background, which affects their way of approaching later life and ageism. We conclude with a notion of establishing a “sense of touch” within the field and a discussion recognizing the potential changes that such an approach can bring to the ways we study ageism worldwide.

The Ageism module fielded in the 2008–2009 European Social Survey (ESS) across 29 representative samples in the European region (with over 55,000 respondents) is the first major internationally comparable study of individual and societal attitudes to age differences, and ageism. This chapter provides an overview and a review of what has been discovered. The chapter will introduce the module and the theoretical and empirical issues it was designed to address. Many of these issues are framed in terms of social psychological theories of prejudice and discrimination and the approach aimed to provide a robust measurement framework for capturing experiences and expression of ageism in different countries. Drawing on empirical work that has used the ESS data the chapter will review and summarise key discoveries and insights, showing how the module has been used to further understanding of how frequently ageism is experienced and how it is expressed in countries within the European region. The chapter highlights the value of the ESS data for understanding ageism and comments briefly on methods such as multilevel analysis for exploring ESS survey data on ageism.

With population ageing, ageism towards older workers has been brought to the attention of researchers and policymakers. This chapter provides an overview and evaluation of existing indicators measuring ageism in the labour market in large-scale international surveys. We present results from an international descriptive comparison of 18 self-reported indicators from seven surveys. These indicators measure attitudes, perceptions, values and experiences with regard to older adults’ labour market participation, and are grouped into the following five aspects of ageism in the labour market: recruitment/retention; performance; training; interaction with older colleagues; and structural ageism. A preliminary taxonomy of measures is developed based on the findings, and recommendations for further research are provided.

The literature across different fields defines ageism ambiguously and widely covers a span of intolerant knowledge, values, attitudes and behaviors towards older adults or more generally toward people of a certain age. In this chapter we provide an overview of how ageism is defined, measured, and assessed in health care and long-term care. In so doing, we aim to bridge the gap between the concept and measurement of ageism in these two contexts and to provide some general insights into the approaches, which researchers can apply to assess ageism in these settings. In this chapter, we therefore aim to answer the following questions namely (i) Why is it important to know how ageism in healthcare and long-term care has been empirically studied? (ii) What evidence for the existence of ageism among key stakeholders (e.g. health care professionals and long-term care workers, family members and older adults) is reported in empirical research covering these two contexts? and (iii) Which are the conceptual and methodological approaches used to measure and assess ageism involving these key stakeholders in the two contexts?