Here is the full transcript of Nancy Pachana’s talk titled “Ageism: The Longevity Thief” at TEDxUQ conference.
Nancy Pachana’s talk, “Ageism: The Longevity Thief,” addresses the pervasive issue of ageism, highlighting its detrimental effects on individuals and society. She emphasizes that ageism, defined as prejudice and discrimination based on age, robs individuals of opportunities and can shorten life expectancy by up to 7.5 years.
Pachana discusses the importance of combating ageism to improve quality of life across the lifespan, particularly in the context of increasing global longevity. She proudly mentions her affiliation with the University of Queensland, noting its status as the first age-friendly university in the southern hemisphere. Through her engaging talk, Pachana calls for a societal shift in perception towards aging, urging actions to dismantle ageist stereotypes and barriers.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
I have lived for 58 years, and what do you know about me? Do you know anything about my capabilities? Anything about my health status? Even what you can see, the gray streaks in my hair. This is actually a deliberate, and I would say, an artful collaboration with my fabulous hairdresser. But did you make a different assumption? These sorts of assumptions based on age, gender, country of origin, sexual orientation form a group of “isms” that are both dangerous and damaging.
I’m a psychologist, and I study aging. I’m going to talk to you today about the ism that I know best: ageism. Ageism is defined as assumptions, judgments, stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination based solely on chronological age. I’m very sorry to say that ageism is rife in the world.
The Prevalence of Ageism
Ageism is in the workplace, it’s at home, it’s in schools. In fact, the World Health Organization has shown that one in two people globally hold moderately to severely ageist attitudes.
These attitudes rob people of opportunity. “You’re too young for this job; you’re too old for this job; you’re too young to do this activity; you’re too old to do this activity.” So, for people across the lifespan, they’re not able to participate fully in life.
And although I said that ageism affects people across the lifespan, it affects our most stark for people in the second half of life. And why is this? Well, in the first half of life, ageist attitudes are all around us, you know, the media, people around us, and we think, “This doesn’t really apply to me; I don’t have to be worried about this.” But then, at some point, someone does apply those stereotypes to you.
And you think, “Wait a minute, that’s not who I am, that’s not me.” But the stereotypes keep being applied. The lost opportunities pile up. And at some stage, you might say, “Maybe these do apply to me. Maybe this is who I am.” Becca Levy at Yale University has shown that these sorts of internalized ageist attitudes rob us of seven and a half years of life. That’s right, seven and a half years of life.
If I had a pill that would give you seven and a half years of life, if I could show you something in the environment that you could avoid, that you could gain those years, I would be very popular. People would want to know about it. But when I tell you instead that it’s how we are with each other, what we say and do to each other and to ourselves, this is vexing. It’s much easier to take a pill than it is to change behavior.
Living Longer and Healthier
But we do have to change these behaviors because as everyone knows, people all over are living longer. But that’s also an incorrect assumption. There are groups in the world, for example, indigenous people who are not sharing the dividends of a long life to the same extent as non-indigenous people. So, we must take account of that.
But in taking account of that, you still might say, “Well, we’re adding all these years of life. It’s still all added at the end where there’s disease and disability. Why would I be interested in that?” But that’s also an incorrect assumption because public health messages, medical advances have kept the proportion of life that is mainly in disability relatively constant.
The Decade of Healthy Aging
And so then the added years of longevity are in the middle of life, in the heart of life. So, that then if you rob yourself of seven and a half years of life, that also comes from the heart of life. Ageism is a major concern. The United Nations has named this decade that we’re in the Decade of Healthy Aging.
And a major goal of this decade is combating ageism. The World Health Organization, in support of this, has come up with a framework of major sectors of society that can work together to formulate policies and practices that frame the longevity dividend as just that, a dividend. Positive outcomes for the individual and society, not simply framed as cost and burden.
I’m going to tell you about the sector in this framework that I know best, the higher education sector. I’m so proud to be able to tell you that my university, the University of Queensland, was the first age-friendly university in the southern hemisphere. It joined a worldwide group of over 85 universities that are united in aspiring to ten principles to make their universities more accessible.
These ten principles can be summed up in the very first principle: “All people, older people included, should have access to all of the activities of the university.” And so you could say, across the lifespan, everyone should be included in all aspects of the life of the university. But this has required some rethinking, because the activities of life traditionally have been very tied to chronological age.
Rethinking Life’s Activities
When you’re young, you go to school. When you’re aged in the middle of life, you work. Older age, you retire, and then you die. But with the benefits of greater longevity, now we have a new view of the activities of life.
So, we can dip in and out of education, in and out of work. We can take various points of time for leisure activities and for caregiving responsibilities. Therefore, the growth and development opportunities that education offers can be interwoven throughout the lifespan.
Embracing a Modern Viewpoint
Unfortunately, not all universities have been able to grasp and take advantage of this change from a traditional to a more modern viewpoint. What would it look like if you took that viewpoint? Well, for example, research. I do research on dementia. But this does not mean that I do research on people living with dementia or for people living with dementia, but my colleagues and I do research with people living with dementia. We co-design our research questions and our projects so they’re targeted to the absolute problems and potential solutions experienced by this group. Think about the classroom.
Think about the great opportunity of having a wide variety of ages sitting in the same room, learning together, sharing their hopes and their fears and their experiences. Think about reaching out to stakeholders who represent later life or older people. This will ensure that the research and teaching that we do at the university is grounded in policy and is relevant to that policy.
Let’s do a thought experiment about this university. Let’s say that a 58-year-old woman is walking across campus. Why is she there? Well, she could be a professor on her way to yet another meeting. She could be someone who’s just been hired by the university, just gotten her degree, and she’s off to give her very first class.
She could be an undergraduate student or a postgraduate student. She could be a person living with early-onset dementia on her way to participate in a research study. She could be a person living with early-onset dementia on her way to meet her research team to revise their ethics application on their co-designed project. You can’t assume what 58 is. What 58 can do can be anything.
So, how can all of us help 58 and 68 and 88 and 108 overcome the stigma and barriers of ageism? I’m going to tell you how. Avoid lookism. Lookism is the most primitive of all of the isms.
A Call to Action
It’s making these assumptions just on how people look. And if, for example, you make ageist assumptions of a person from a historically marginalized background, the damages are even more profound. Call out ageism as and where you see it. The research shows that ageism is the least called out of the isms and the most difficult to address at a systemic level.
Support those people who are breaking the mold. Let me give you some examples. An 80-year-old Aboriginal woman picks up paint and paint brushes for the first time to dazzle us with her vision of country. A lifelong bird watcher picks up their citizen science software, inputs it into their phone, contributing to the worldwide database of knowledge of our ecosystems.
A lifelong fashionista in New York finds a whole new generation to inspire on Instagram at age 101. These people are role models, and they push the boundaries for all of us because we need a world for all people of all ages. Each and every one of us can help to create a long life of possibilities, of opportunities for others and for ourselves. What will you do today that will make that happen?