‘Women are just more active’ – gender as a determining factor in involvement in senior centres

Abstract

ABSTRACTCentres for seniors offering leisure-time activities currently represent significant actors that translate the idea of active ageing into a particular approach to seniors. Despite the fact that active ageing is now represented by the state and providers of social services as the universally desirable way of ageing, the significantly smaller numbers of male clients was identified as a marked feature of such organisations. A three-year ethnographic study was conducted at two centres in the Czech Republic which offer seniors-only leisure-time activities strongly grounded in the idea of active ageing. The method of participant observation was used, and 47 in-depth interviews were conducted with the centres' clients and employees. The higher participation by women in the centres and the role they attribute to such organisations in their lives is analysed in the context of their previous gendered biographies. Gender patterns embedded in the way daily activities at the senior centres are organised, as well as in the idea of active ageing itself, are highlighted. Despite the seeming invisibility of gender as a principle that structures the way these centres are run, they are in fact gendered organisations, where gender emerges as a basic principle affecting the chances of participating in active ageing as presented by the centres.