We translated a text by friends from Germany. Working in hospitals, most of us are dealing with the question of ‘age’ every day. And although we could question the authors’ claim that age is just socially and culturally defined, rather than biologically, we can definitely see that a lot about age depends on the wider social context: Are people alone or do they have support? Do they have access to services they need? Age is biological but your biology is affected by both your genetics, but very significantly by your social circumstances. So people who are poor get frail, sick and die earlier, but having lived with illness and frailty for longer
The links and collaboration between hospital and community care, which is paramount in particular for older people, is increasingly fragile. During the Covid pandemic, the lack of communication and coordination between primary and secondary care cost many elderly people their lives, as Covid patients were discharged to care homes too early, without the right measures in place.
Privatisation of elderly care
Compared to hospitals, the process of privatisation is much more advanced in community and elderly care, which contributes to the problems with coordinating care. Until the late 1980s there were thousands of NHS long-stay specialist beds for older patients (geriatric beds). Most of these have been closed and been replaced with private care home beds. For example, in 1987 there were 52,273 geriatric beds. 20 years later geriatric bed numbers had been cut by over 60%. Since 2010 the category of ‘geriatric beds’ has disappeared. There are still Care of the Elderly wards and teams but the focus is on rehabilitation and earlier discharge which results in better outcomes. There are two problems; poor unfocused care which is not holistic and lack of sufficient rehab in hospital and then lack of appropriate and affordable care in the community. Private care is much more costly than local authority care homes. Nursing home places increased from 18,000 in 1982 to 150,000 in 1994: private residential home places expanded from 44,000 in 1982 to 164,000 in 1994.
All this entailed a massive diversion of money from the public to the corporate sector, and from the pockets of working class people to private enterprises. In 1979 it cost the Department for Health and Social Care £10m to finance 11,000 clients in nursing homes. By 1993, 281,000 people were receiving state-funded care in private homes, at a cost of £2.575 billion. In 1988, the ‘Griffiths Report’ (Community Care; Agenda for Action) proposed the transfer of responsibility for continuing care of the elderly from the NHS (where it was still provided free of charge at time of use) to local government (where it would be subject to means-tested charges).
Many hospitals including NBT run front door frailty services in ED, the medical and surgical assessment units to do comprehensive assessments of frail patients to ensure that patients receive appropriate and holistic inpatient care and this reduces length of stay (LOS) or plan appropriate discharge with a treatment plan and appropriate community care. Ideally these teams would cover other areas, especially psychiatry (for both older and younger adults, as the latter often have multiple co-morbidities and frailty at a much younger age and die 15-20 years younger than people without serious mental health issues).
Current moment
With this shift also the working conditions in elderly care deteriorated. Friends from Notes from Below have done a great job in gathering workers’ reports from the sector and we also recently spoke with colleagues who used to work in elderly care. Another interesting report can be read here.
We should keep all this in mind when the current government speaks about prioritising community care in the future. Of course, it sounds sensible to treat patients closer to home and not concentrate them in massive hospitals, but historically this shift of focus went hand in hand with the isolation and individualisation of workers and patients, as a precondition to undermine their working and caring conditions. If you have thoughts on the matter, write to us!
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By
Anke, Katrin and Maré
“The demand that people must remain human in old age would imply a radical upheaval. But this outcome cannot be achieved through a few limited reforms that leave the system untouched: the exploitation of workers, the atomisation of society, the misery of a culture reserved for the elite – all of this leads to this dehumanised old age. And it shows that everything needs to be reorganised from scratch. That is why this problem is so diligently ignored with silence.” (Simone de Beauvoir: Old Age, 1970) [1]
We, as part of the left-wing scene, also prefer to avoid this topic: growing old, being old and old people. It is a topic that raises not only socio-economic issues, or issues related to feminism, migration and class struggle, but also very personal, even intimate ones. It is therefore too important to be left solely to health and economic ministries, social workers and carers. In this text, we want to at least touch on all these aspects and hope to spark discussions about alternatives for how we can age with dignity. In our research, we have limited ourselves largely to Germany or at least to rich industrialised countries, but we are grateful for any additions.
Age cannot be defined biologically, but only described culturally and politically. What is perceived as old age varies considerably both historically and geographically. On average, Germans perceive the age of 63 as the so-called social age limit. [2] Older people themselves set the age limit higher (as do women and healthier, happier, more educated and partnered people). A quarter of people over the age of 70 describe themselves as middle-aged, and only a small percentage (14 per cent) call themselves old. [3] It’s always the others who are old!
Many health researchers promote the ideal of ‘successful ageing’. [4] They do mention that this concept requires physical and mental well-being and, above all, social participation, but they do not mention that in the pursuit of ‘successful aging’, the cat chases its tail. It is not society’s responsibility to create these conditions, but rather the responsibility of the elderly to successfully master their lives. Anyone who is not fit, well-groomed and smiling, preferably in a couple, as on the posters photoshopped by senior marketing experts, has probably done something wrong in life. [5]
The clear link between social conditions on one side and health problems, premature death, loneliness and the undignified conditions in nursing homes on the other is often ignored – even though statistics, including those from government sources, confirm this time and again. Wealthy seniors seem to be the only ones who are still of interest in this system: as consumers. While caring for children is at least an investment in the future, poorer older people are seen as a burden.
Demographic trends: justified fear or political strategy?
The ageing population is a hotly debated topic in many high-income countries. Governments are increasingly portraying this problem as a looming crisis: too many pensioners, too few workers and too much strain on social security systems. The fact that the proportion of people over 65 in the German population is steadily increasing is undeniable. In 20 years, a good quarter of the population will be over 65. [6] Life expectancy in Germany has also risen dramatically over the last 150 years. [7] However, the gender gap in life expectancy has increased almost tenfold during this period. [8] Another important index is ‘healthy life expectancy’, i.e. the average number of years a person can expect to live in good health and without significant limitations on their activity. Since women develop age-related health problems much earlier, there is hardly any gender gap in this index. [9]
Of course, it is great that we humans are living longer and can treat many previously fatal diseases more effectively. Even better is that the period during which we no longer have to work for a living is getting longer and longer. However, this must not lead to the elderly being pitted against the young. After all, the economic problems of the so-called ‘ageing boom’ are not natural, but primarily a reflection of capitalist conditions. Instead of criticising the system, many Germans succumb to catastrophism and even significantly overestimate the number of elderly people. [11]
Today, demographic panic serves various political purposes. It justifies pension reforms, including raising the retirement age and cutting benefits. Women, especially those with higher formal education, are encouraged to give the nation more children. [11] And economic considerations increasingly determine immigration policy: skilled migrants are welcome to ‘fill the pension coffers,’ while less skilled migrants are pushed into care and service jobs.
In The Age, Simone de Beauvoir argues that the alarmist rhetoric surrounding demographic ageing leads to divisions between workers and pensioners – as if they did not belong to the same class:
‘… it is in the interests of the exploiters to break the solidarity between the workers and the unproductive, so that the latter are no longer represented by anyone.’ [12]
The poor are being screwed over once again
While some of Germany’s current pensioners are even wealthy (because they worked for many years in good economic times with good wages), the next generation faces more difficult times, as even the bourgeois parties predict. [13] More and more older people have neither economic security nor political influence and are therefore dependent on minimal state support – without a lobby and with little political organisation. (In the UK with a high number of people now in private rental housing the concern is that poorer individuals with inadequate or no pension will become destitute and homeless.)
In Germany, the number of pensioners dependent on basic income support has tripled to well over 700,000 in the last 20 years. Senior citizens are now among the people most at risk of poverty, alongside children and single parents. In 2024, almost 20 per cent of people over the age of 65 in Germany will be considered at risk of poverty [14] – a sharp increase compared to previous decades. And it should be remembered that around 85 per cent of people worldwide do not receive any pension at all. [15]
There is a clear correlation between income and life expectancy: a study by Karl Lauterbach [16] and others found that less than 80 per cent of German men who earn less than €1,500 per month even reach retirement age, compared to over 90 per cent of men who earn more than three times that amount. Wealthier men not only live longer, but also receive a higher pension for longer – almost 70 per cent longer than poorer men. Ultimately, this leads to a redistribution from the bottom to the top (namely of the pension contributions paid in), which causes far too little outrage. In the USA, rich men live about 10 years longer than poor men, in Germany nine years longer, but in more egalitarian countries such as Sweden only about two years longer.
There are also huge inequalities in terms of care dependency: men who earn less than 60 per cent of the median income are six years more likely to require some form of care than their better-earning counterparts. For women, the difference is three years. [17] And workers become dependent on care four years earlier than civil servants.
Added to this is the gender-specific pension gap: women not only earn less during their working lives, but also receive significantly lower pensions as a result. The gender pension gap in Germany has narrowed significantly in recent years, but remains above the EU average. [18] Furthermore, the statistics include survivor’s pensions, and far fewer women are married today, meaning they cannot supplement their own pensions with a widow’s pension. [19]
Finally, many more older people are working today [20] – about a third out of financial necessity, another third for personal satisfaction, and the rest cite reasons such as having a working partner or, sadly, the need for social contact. [21]
The so-called ‘active pension’, which allows employees to earn up to £2,000 tax-free on top of their pension, is likely to increase the number of working pensioners even further. According to the federal government, freelancers and mini-jobbers do not need such incentives, as many of them cannot retire so soon for financial reasons.
Caring
Care [22] as a subject of analysis is a modern category. It only emerged when the category of ‘women’ and the expectations of what they ‘naturally’ do were called into question. Only then was care understood as a (scarce) resource (when it was not yet scarce, it was simply invisible and therefore not perceived as a resource at all).
At the beginning of the 20th century, care for the elderly in Germany was largely organised within the extended family, even though there were already some, mostly religious, institutions (Caritas, Diakonie) for this purpose. The state was hardly involved. Within the extended family, responsibility for caring for the elderly lay with women of various ages, including daughters, daughters-in-law, unmarried sisters, nieces, etc. The family was an economic unit that needed several unpaid carers to survive, and the roles within this family unit were not freely chosen. Older women were also expected to take on caring tasks, especially the care of small children, with older people caring for young people and young people caring for older people in some cases.
With the development of the nuclear family after the Second World War and the gradual disappearance of the male breadwinner model [23], it became clear how much elderly care a family could realistically afford and was willing to provide. In the the ‘real-existing socialism’ of eastern Germany, state-run care facilities for the elderly (e.g. Volkssolidarität) were established to enable or enforce full employment for all men under 65 and all women under 60. However, family care continued to be strongly encouraged and women had to perform care work in their second shift. Care homes were often underfunded and understaffed, with little privacy and autonomy. [24]
In the western Germany, from the 1970s onwards, women increasingly refused to care for their (in-laws) parents and give up their careers completely – if only because they could not afford to do so. Girls under the age of 16 were no longer expected to take on extensive care tasks in addition to their everyday school life, and unmarried women were no longer expected to care for distant family members. In general, unpaid care work was no longer considered a ‘natural’ task for women, which was due to both feminist struggles and capitalist restructuring.
The resulting ‘loss of resources’ in unpaid care work occurred in parallel with the growing care needs of the elderly population.
Nursing homes
Today, the proportion of people over 70 in German nursing homes is around six per cent [25] and has hardly increased since the 1990s. [26] However, when looking at the population over 85, this figure rises to 40 per cent (still not the majority!). [27] Most people in nursing homes (between 70 and 80 per cent) are women, partly because they tend to live longer, and partly because in heterosexual couples, women are on average younger than their partners, so the men are likely to die before them. [28]
It is common knowledge that most nursing homes are understaffed, underfunded and unsuitable for a dignified life. The government is doing little to change this situation. Perhaps this issue would receive greater political attention if men – especially politicians – were just as likely as women to end up in nursing homes.
In a 2022 survey, the vast majority said they would prefer to be cared for at home by family members in their old age. [29] And when given the choice between a nursing home and euthanasia, nearly a third of respondents said they would prefer euthanasia! [30]
Queer people are particularly reluctant to move into nursing homes because they may be exposed to homophobic or transphobic discrimination there. Trans* people fear having to explain themselves over and over again in everyday care situations, as many carers are insufficiently sensitised to the realities of trans* people’s lives. [31] In order to delay moving into a care facility for as long as possible, older queer people often try to build a broader care network within their communities. [32]
However, it is not only queer people who encounter rejection of their needs. Sexuality in old age in particular remains a taboo, regardless of orientation, and is not accepted among residents in many facilities. Care staff or relatives often react to the mere existence of such desires with ignorance, discouragement or by making people feel bad about it.
Professional home care (outpatient care)
This widespread rejection of nursing homes has led – especially since the 1990s – to the development of alternative services ranging from a few hours of professional home care per week to fully assisted living.
Long-term care insurance partially finances professional home care according to the level of care required. However, applying for such a benefit is a very complex and bureaucratic process (an assessment by medical authorities who award a score corresponding to five different care levels …). A high care level gives access to care benefits in kind, i.e. the right to professional care at home. Even if one succeeds in obtaining a care level, the benefits are far from sufficient. And as we will see when we look at working conditions in this sector, the benefits are extremely regulated, codified and, in some cases, dehumanised.
Current policy measures promote and prioritise care by relatives over institutional care. This is hardly surprising, as professional care, even if poorly paid, would be too expensive for most working class people. And even if it were financed through indirect wages (such as taxes), it would be unsustainable for a capitalist economy. However, the financing of care by relatives is also currently under debate, especially care level 1, even though this only provides for consultations and minimal subsidies. [33]
Who cares?
Professional and formal care
While working conditions in the healthcare sector are known to be particularly poor, elderly care suffers most from low wages, high workloads and low unionisation rates. Conditions have deteriorated further during the Covid pandemic, as carers have been confronted more frequently with the death of residents and have had to compensate for the lack of emotional support from families. At the end of the pandemic, surveys showed that many were considering changing jobs. Fearing a wave of resignations, the government introduced some wage increases and bonus payments. Nevertheless, wages in this sector remain lower than in other areas of healthcare. This can be explained in part by the fact that unionisation is particularly difficult for elderly care workers. While some strikes in the healthcare sector have led to (limited) improvements (e.g. the strikes at Charité and Vivantes in Berlin, which secured binding staffing ratios and compensatory days off in the event of non-compliance, as well as guaranteed pay), it is more difficult to apply the same tactics in elderly care. [34] This is even more true for mobile professional carers, who have little opportunity to meet with colleagues. However, it is precisely these workers who have seen their workload increase particularly over the last 15 years. [35]
This increase in workload and labour shortages in the sector have led to a ‘rationalisation’ of home care, which Beatrice Müller vividly describes in her book “Wert-Abjektion – Zur Abwertung von Care-Arbeit im patriarchalen Kapitalismus am Beispiel der ambulanten Pflege” (2016). She illustrates a care organisation reminiscent of factory work, in which all tasks are isolated and analysed and clocking in and out is enforced through digitalisation. She also describes how the work schedules of care workers do not allow for emotional care, such as a short conversation with a depressed elderly person. These aspects of care work resist rationalisation and simply cost bosses too much money. As a result, many carers try to provide this emotional component by working unpaid overtime or reorganising their work schedule, which makes it even tighter – but at least more meaningful.
(In the UK we have a similar situation with the expectation of home care workers that pay is only for the visits not travel time or travel costs! The really important benefits of spending sufficient time with a client and addressing their physical and emotional needs is not accounted for.)
Global care chains
Against the backdrop of labour shortages and the pressure to keep wages low, a number of programmes have been introduced to fill the ‘care gap’ with carers from abroad. One of these is the ‘Triple Win Programme’ (which reaches new heights in shameless discourse on mutual benefit), an initiative between Germany and certain partner countries that recruits trained carers from the Philippines, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Tunisia, India and Jordan to work in the formal care sector in Germany, mostly in professional nursing homes.
However, far more migrant care workers are employed informally, without proper contracts or legal protection. In Germany, an estimated 300,000 to 700,000 such care workers are privately employed, primarily to care for elderly people at home. A significant proportion – around 200,000 according to one study – come from Central and Eastern European countries, most commonly Poland, followed by Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia and Bulgaria. [36] This is often organised by private placement agencies. A simple internet search reveals websites offering ‘qualified nursing staff from Poland to care for elderly people in their own homes with private 24-hour care’ starting at just €2,790! [37]
Around the year 2000, American feminist Arlie Hochschild developed the concept of global care chains (GCC) to describe the phenomenon of migrant live-in care and its impact on the reproduction of the global working class – in particular the lack of care that these processes cause in the Global South, which has massive social consequences. Since 2000, the GCC concept has evolved through various waves of criticism. It has been criticised for ignoring important factors in the decisions of care workers from abroad and for failing to recognise their agency and subjectivity, or for the original GCC discourse focusing on globalisation and neoliberalism – concepts rooted in the Global North – while neglecting the postcolonial history of care work (which highlights the continuities between colonial and postcolonial organisations of migrant care work). More recently, anthropologist Shalini Grover has pointed out that the consequences of this global care work for migrants are not sufficiently understood. [38] In particular, the ageing of carers themselves plays a significant role. According to Grover, when migrant care workers return to their home countries after years (sometimes decades) of caring abroad and are no longer able to work, they receive neither the financial support that formally employed workers in the West receive for retirement nor the support of their own children, some of whom feel that their mothers have abandoned them. Although she refuses to portray migrant workers as mere victims and acknowledges their personal responsibility in deciding to migrate, this position does not close its eyes to the harsh realities faced by migrants when they return to their countries of origin in old age.
Unpaid carers
In Germany, almost a quarter of people aged between 43 and 65 regularly supported, cared for or looked after at least one person due to their poor health in 2023. [39] Almost three quarters of these carers are women. [40] In 1995, the Care Insurance Act introduced care allowance, i.e. money for non-professional carers. The amount of the payment ranges from €347 for care level 2 to €990 for care level 5. Given that care level 5 often requires 24-hour care, it is clear whose costs are being saved here. Even under conditions of extreme exploitation, professional home care in Germany usually costs several thousand euros per month. UK has care allowances for unpaid carers not very much money similar to Germany
The so-called generation gap must also be taken into account. As people tend to have children later in life, their children are younger when they themselves require long-term care. This, together with the postponement of the retirement age, increases the number of years during which working children have to look after their parents in need of care, meaning that they may have to reduce their working hours. This in turn has consequences for their economic situation. As feminist Michaela Moser emphasised in her text “Achtung Sorgearbeit!” (Attention: Care Work!) at the poverty conference “ACHTUNG. Abwertung hat System” (Attention: Devaluation is Systematic) (2018): ‘Caring makes you poor’. [41]
To prevent people from giving up their jobs, care entitlements for workers (domestic care) were introduced in Germany. These entitle workers to ten days of partially paid emergency leave to care for close relatives in emergency situations, as well as the right to unpaid leave (up to six months) and unpaid reduced working hours (up to 24 months). However, low-income families are generally unable to cope financially with this loss of earnings. A study [42] from 2019 shows the impact of caregiving on the lives and health of carers: two-thirds of carers report high emotional stress. Around half suffer from physical strain. Over 70 per cent feel emotionally stressed.
Another report [43] found that carers suffer from back pain, depression, sleep disorders and burnout significantly more often than others. The more care you provide, the higher the risk of becoming ill yourself – and the more likely you are to need care later on.
The ageing of women
Women cover a large part of the care work and are not only more affected by the misery of old age professionally, but also privately. In a text from 1972, Susan Sontag speaks of a ‘double standard in ageing’. [44]
‘… women are freed from the bleak panic of middle-aged men whose “achievements” seem small, who feel stuck on the career ladder or fear being displaced by someone younger. But they are also denied most of the real satisfactions that men derive from their work – satisfactions that often increase with age. [45]
Studies suggest that men often fall into a hole after retirement, having identified with their careers for decades, but that they quickly find their way out of it. Women are happier than men at the age of 60, but their happiness declines rapidly with age, while that of men increases again. [46]
Sontag also shows that women have much more to lose in the ageing process – not least because of society’s expectation that they remain physically attractive:
“The reason women experience ageing more painfully than men is not simply that they care more about their appearance than men do. Men also care about their appearance and want to be attractive, but since men are primarily concerned with being and doing rather than appearing, the standards for appearance are much less strict. The standards for men are generous; they correspond to what is possible or “natural” … At the very least, [women] are under intense social pressure not to be ugly. A woman’s fate depends far more than a man’s on looking at least “acceptable”. Men are not subject to this pressure. Good looks are a bonus for a man, not a psychological necessity for maintaining normal self-esteem.”
As they age, women are rarely taken seriously professionally – positions of responsibility rarely go to them, but mostly to men. They are also rarely considered as potential sexual partners. Rather, their fate is invisibility.
In addition to these more socio-cultural differences between female and male ageing, there are also significant economic differences. Not only do women have lower wages and assets, but they also often work part-time – whether forced to do so because they have to care for relatives (children, the elderly, the sick), or motivated by the tax advantages of the family breadwinner model (spousal splitting) that exist in many countries. This leads either to financial dependence on their husbands or directly to poverty in old age. It is precisely those who have spent a large part of their lives caring for others who, in old age at the latest, are themselves dependent on care – care that they often cannot afford, at least not without dragging other women into this vicious circle.
To summarise the misery of ageing women, women are screwed fourfold here: 1. They do most of the care work; 2. They suffer more severely from aging (health and financial problems); 3. They are judged far more harshly than men, even by their female peers; [47] 4. Since men generally die earlier and women usually enter into relationships with older partners, men will no longer be there to care for their partners. [48]
What can be done?
Older people generally have no lobby. There are only a few organisations run by older people themselves to defend their rights. There are some famous examples, such as the Grey Panthers in the USA in the 1970s, originally founded by Maggie Kuhn to fight against forced retirement [49], but which also dealt with issues such as health and social insurance and ageist stereotypes.
However, there have also been recent protests centred on the issue of retirement and living conditions in old age.
The movement against the French pension reform 2023
The protests in France against raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 were not just about the law itself. They developed into a struggle centred on the issue of ageing and the lifestyle that workers desire after many years of employment. While the government insisted that the reform was necessary due to rising life expectancy, the issue of healthy life expectancy was at the centre of the debates. In France, the average healthy life expectancy is around 63 years. However, behind this average lies a massive difference between different occupational groups. One third of workers are unable to work within the first year of retirement, compared to only a quarter of white-collar / clerical workers. [50]
When workers retire later, they spend their last healthy years working and only retire when they are already too ill to fully enjoy their new life after wage labour. The protests therefore focused on the refusal to allow capital to suck the life energy out of them.
Although the struggle is over, pension reform remains a central topic of political debate in France. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced in October 2025 that he would suspend the reform until January 2028, because this was the only way he could hope to survive politically and avoid a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly.
Germany’s quiet acceptance of pension reform
Compared to the massive resistance in France, protests against the last major pension reform in Germany were subdued – even though, according to trade unions, around 80 per cent of the population was against it. In 2007, the federal government passed a highly controversial law to gradually raise the retirement age from 65 to 67. At that time, most people were already retiring at around 62, so this measure was widely seen as a step towards increasing poverty in old age – especially for people in physically demanding jobs. Even though IG Metall trade union officials liked to boast that they had mobilised a quarter of a million people, there was no major movement that could have thwarted the planned reform. The reform was passed and the retirement age was raised.
‘We are all pensioners – it’s only a matter of time!’
Things turned out very differently in Argentina, where pensioners succeeded in shaking up the sluggish trade union apparatus and persuading it to take action against President Milei’s brutal austerity policy. Older people are among those most affected by this. According to the IMF, pensioners in Argentina lost more than a third of their purchasing power during Milei’s first year in office. The minimum pension is currently only €290, while the cost of living, especially for basic necessities, is often comparable to prices in Europe. Although they were few in number for months, they took to the streets week after week, despite police repression, tear gas and intimidation. They protested not only for their own rights, but also for those of future generations. ‘We are all pensioners – it’s only a matter of time!’ was one of their slogans.
In March 2025, the movement gained new momentum when a photo of a crying pensioner wearing a Chacarita Juniors football club jersey went viral and sparked a wave of solidarity. Football fans and clubs began to support the pensioners in their struggle. After almost a year of silence, the CGT – Argentina’s largest trade union federation – finally responded by calling for a nationwide general strike in April, the third under Milei’s government. Many say it was the persistence and courage of the pensioners that forced them to act and ultimately brought the country to a standstill on the 10th of April. [51]
‘Seniors in fight mode’
Back to our neighbourhood in Berlin. Particularly impressive is the fighting spirit of the seniors in Pankow, who occupied their leisure centre in 2012 after the district refused to provide further funding for its maintenance. With the support of students, neighbours and passers-by, they managed to prevent the closure after almost four months of occupation, making international headlines. The district continued to make the building available to the support association, but on condition that it did not contribute to the costs. In the following years, the sprightly senior citizens even began to organise important repair and maintenance work on their own initiative. [52]
Defend Our Juries protests especially those demanding de-proscription of Palestine Action have been predominantly older and often very frail individuals in UK
Now (2025), the long-term survival of their leisure centre is once again under threat. Due to austerity measures by the Senate, Volkssolidarität is discontinuing its funding for the meeting place at the end of the year. The users are not deterred by this either, but are already planning to continue running the meeting place on their own with their support association Stille Straße 10 e.V. They have already developed a concept for an open, intercultural meeting place.
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Footnotes
[1] Simone de Beauvoir, Das Alter, Rowohlt, Hamburg 1972 [1970], p. 10.
[2] antidiskriminierungsstelle.de/SharedDocs/downloads/DE/publikationen/Expertisen/altersbilder_lang.html
[3] In countries with higher levels of education or greater social inequality, people set a higher age to define ‘being old’. The researchers expressly point out that this social age limit has nothing to do with the applicable retirement age.
[4] bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/fileadmin/Dateien/5_Publikationen/Gesundheit/Abschlussberichte/Abschlussbericht_Erfolgreiches_Altern_bf.pdf
[5] www.focusplus.de/magazin/focus/2025-46
[6] It rose from 18% 20 years ago to 22.5% in 2023 and is expected to reach 27% in 20 years. bbsr.bund.de/BBSR/DE/presse/presseinformationen/2024/bevoelkerungsprognose-2045
[7] From 1871 to 2022, the life expectancy of 65-year-olds in Germany rose from less than 10 years to around 17.5 additional years for men and almost 21 years for women. destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoelkerung/Sterbefaelle-Lebenserwartung/sterbetafel
[8] A widely cited ‘monastery study’ from the 1990s, which analysed the life expectancy of monks and nuns under similar conditions, found only minimal gender differences in life expectancy – suggesting that biological factors alone cannot explain the larger gender gap. Instead, the discrepancy is related to social and behavioural factors, such as: higher smoking rates among men; occupational hazards and stress; differences in family responsibilities and status; alcohol abuse; poor diet, especially red meat (perhaps because it is considered more ‘masculine’ than salad and vegetables). The study also revealed some other notable findings: nuns and women in the general population live the longest. Monks live slightly shorter lives than nuns, but still longer than average men. West German housewives have the lowest mortality rates. Working, childless women have the lowest life expectancy among women – around 80 years, which is four years less than housewives. www.cloisterstudy.eu
[9] In Germany, healthy life expectancy at birth in 2022 was 61.2 years for women and 60.9 years for men. ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Healthy_life_years_statistics&action=statexp-seat&lang=en
[10] ‘The majority of respondents (74 per cent) overestimated the proportion of people over 70 [at the time of the survey: 18.23 per cent] in German society, in some cases significantly, with estimates ranging from 22 to 90 per cent. The most common estimate was 30 per cent.’ antidiskriminierungsstelle.de/SharedDocs/downloads/ DE/publikationen/Expertisen/altersbilder_lang.html
[11] There must be 2.07 children per woman in order to maintain the nation’s population without immigration.
[12] Beauvoir, Old Age, op. cit., p. 7.
[13] The pension level required for an adequate standard of living is around 53% of the last net income. However, according to government forecasts, this figure could fall to just 44% in the coming years. sozialpolitik-aktuell.de/files/sozialpolitik-aktuell/_Politikfelder/Alter-Rente/Datensammlung/PDF-Dateien/abbVIII37_Grafik_Monat_07_2017.pdf
[14] de.statista.com/statistics/data/study/785537/survey/poverty-risk-rate-of-senior-citizens-in-Germany
[15] wsws.org/en/articles/2001/07/rent-j20.html
[16] sozialpolitik-aktuell.de/files/sozialpolitik-aktuell/_Kontrovers/Rente67/Zusammenhang-Einkommen-Lebenserwartung.pdf
[17] tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/je-armer-desto-fruher-pflegebedurftig-6181771.html? icid=in-text-link_9425228
[18] In 2013, it was still more than 45%, currently just under 26%.
[19] de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1453064/umfrage/gender-pension-gap-in-deutschland
[20] In 2013, only 13% of 65- to 69-year-olds were still working – by 2023, this figure had risen to 20%. 13% of over-65s in Germany are still working at the impressive age of 74. destatis.de/DE/Themen/Querschnitt/Demografischer-Wandel/Aeltere-Menschen/erwerbstaetigkeit.html
[21] destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2024/10/PD24_N050_12_13.html
[22] We use the English word here because, among other things, as a feminist battle cry, it encompasses more than the German term Pflege (care).
[23] This had already been happening in the GDR since the end of the war, while the process was slower in the FRG, but accelerated as a result of the feminist struggles of the 1970s.
[24] See Petra Tschörtner (director), Unsere alten Tage (Our Old Days), documentary film, GDR/DEFA Studio for Documentary Films, 1989: https://www.defa-stiftung.de/filme/filme-suchen/unsere-alten-tage
[25] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoelkerung/Ster…
[26] antidiskriminierungsstelle.de/SharedDocs/downloads/DE/publikationen/Expertisen/altersbilder_lang.html
[27] Considering that ‘18.1% of people aged 80 and over […] are classified as suffering from dementia’, it is not surprising that there are constant missing person reports for senior citizens. library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/63907
[28] Care between partners – when one of them needs care or both are dependent on each other – accounts for a significant proportion of the support that enables frail older people to live without professional carers or their children. The divorce and separation rate therefore has a direct impact on how much care the rest of the family has to provide if the person in need of care has no other support network (friends, neighbours).
[29] www.aerztezeitung.de/Politik/Umfrage-Grosse-Mehrheit-will-zu-Hause-gepf…
[30] This figure would certainly be lower if the question were asked at the time when such a concrete decision has to be made, but this percentage is nevertheless very telling.
[31] https://www.transinterqueer.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/TrIQstudie-t…. See also Tamara-Louise Zeyen, Ralf Lottmann, Regina Brunnett, Mechthild Kiegelmann (eds.): LGBTIQ* and Age(ing). A Textbook for Care and Social Work, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020
[32] See Ralf Lottmann, Rüdiger Lautmann, Maria do Mar Castro Varela (eds.): Homosexuality_s and Age(ing), Findings from Research and Practice, Springer VS, Berlin 2016.
[33] Relief amount for e.g. domestic help of max. £115, for care products max. £34 and for home emergency call system max. £25.50 per month and a one-off payment of £4,180 for so-called housing adaptations. pflege.de/pflegekasse-pflegerecht/pflegegrad/pflegegrad-1/#:~:text=Welche%20Leistungen%20bekommt%20man%20bei,sowie%20der%20Zuschuss%20zur%20Wohnraumanpassung and tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/pflegegrad-koalition-100.html
[34] sueddeutsche.de/politik/pflege-streiks-pflegenotstand-1.5643218
[35] Between 2011 and 2021, the number of people employed in professional home care rose by 52%, while at the same time the number of people requiring this type of care increased by 82% (the increase in nursing homes is much lower). bgw-online.de/resource/blob/110064/d5cdd6b8c2d43d222c96c75331ab5dc9/bgw-trendbericht-ambulante-pflege-2024-data.pdf
[36] press.uni-mainz.de/old-age-care-crisis-in-germany-are-migrant-care-workers-a-suitable-solution-for-state-and-families
[37] deutsche-seniorenbetreuung.de/caregivers/caregivers-from-poland This phenomenon of live-in care was highlighted by Bridget Anderson in her book Doing the Dirty Work? The Global Politics of Domestic Labour, Zed Books, London 2000.
[38] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0YeE5SMtuk
[39] dza.de/fileadmin/dza/Dokumente/DZA_Aktuell/DZA-Aktuell_03_2024_Vereinbarkeit_fin.pdf
[40] vdk.de/themen/frauen/frauen-und-pflege
[41] www.armutskonferenz.at/media/moser_sorge-_bzw._care-arbeit_und_armutsbe…
[42] rvr.ruhr/news/startseite-news/news/wittener-studie-belegt-hohe-belastung-von-pflegenden-angehoerigen-1
[43] barmer.de/resource/blob/1143786/1b8d8606f75a5778f8c7ccfef93d6e59/care-study-coronavirus-related-resources-and-stress-analysis-among-caregivers-data.pdf
[44] archive.org/details/the-double-standard-of-aging/page/n27/mode/1up
[45] Well, she seems to be referring to middle-class men here. This raises the question of the extent to which this observation also applies to the working class, where men can also improve their skills with age, but naturally also suffer from greater exhaustion due to their physically demanding work.
[46] bmfsfj.de/bmfsfj/service/publikationen/frauen-und-maenner-in-der-zweiten- lebenshaelfte-aelterwerden-im-sozialen-wandel-135042
[47] Or even more succinctly: ‘Ugliness in a woman is perceived by everyone, men and women alike, as slightly embarrassing.’ And: ‘It is mainly women who experience ageing (everything that comes before you are actually old) with such aversion and even shame.’ (Susan Sontag, ‘The Double Standard of Aging’, op. cit.).
[48] See the comments of French sociologist Jean-François Mignot (who, incidentally, is neither a Marxist nor a feminist): “Since men value women particularly for their physical beauty, their current fertility and the remaining duration of their fertile phase, the peak of female attractiveness in the eyes of men is reached at a relatively young age – and is perceived by men. Since, on the other hand, women particularly value men for the extent and predictability of the socio-economic resources they will one day possess, the peak of male attractiveness in the eyes of women is only reached at a relatively late age – and experienced by women – (in agrarian societies, only when they have accumulated enough capital to buy land, and in industrial and service societies, only when they have completed their studies and/or entered the labour market or even been promoted there). Consequently, women who know that they are particularly valued at a relatively young age have a strong interest in not postponing marriage for too long, while men, who also know that they are particularly valued at a relatively advanced age, have an interest in postponing marriage in order to find a woman who is more desirable in their eyes than those they could marry at a young age. Since many men enter into relationships later than women, we actually see an average age difference between spouses in favour of the man.‘ Jean-Franҫois Mignot, ’L’écart d’âge entre conjoints”, Revue franҫaise de sociologie, 51/2010, https://shs.cairn.info/revue-francaise-de-sociologie-1-2010-2-page-281?… (accessed 27 November 2025). Translation from French by the authors.
[49] It should not be forgotten that unemployment was high at the time, meaning that jobs were scarce and worth fighting for.
[50] lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2023/01/06/pension-reform-how-long-and-in-what-health-do-the-french-live-after-65_6010557_8.html#
[51] sozonline.de/2025/05/argentinien-rentnerinnen-in-der-ersten-reihe
[52] youtube.com/watch?v=Cm7gGp_Lp0A
