Component 3 Section A: age as a form of differentiation (inequalities affecting the young and the old, ageism) and disability as a form of differentiation (the social model of disability, discrimination and life chances), and the intersection of all forms of inequality.

What this dot point is asking

This statement completes Section A with age and disability as forms of differentiation, and the intersection of all the dimensions. You need age inequality affecting the young and the old and the concept of ageism, disability as inequality (the medical versus social model, discrimination, life chances), and the crucial idea that class, gender, ethnicity, age and disability intersect rather than acting in isolation.

The answer

Age inequality

Age inequality affects both ends of the range:

• The young face low pay (lower minimum wage rates), insecure and part-time work, limited rights (in voting, contracts and benefits) and lower welfare entitlement, and are sometimes negatively stereotyped.
• The old face higher rates of poverty (especially those reliant on pensions), exclusion from employment, and ageism that stereotypes them as dependent or incapable. Functionalist disengagement theory once argued the old gradually withdraw from roles, but critics see this as justifying their exclusion.

Disability inequality

The social model is the sociological view: a person who uses a wheelchair is disabled not by their impairment but by a building without a ramp, by discrimination and by low expectations. On this view, society should change to remove the barriers. Disabled people face worse life chances in employment, income and housing, and discrimination despite legal protection (such as equality law), partly through stereotyping and the imposition of a stigmatised identity.

Intersectionality

The most important idea is intersectionality: the forms of inequality do not act separately but intersect. A person's life chances reflect the combination of their class, gender, ethnicity, age and disability, and the dimensions can reinforce one another (for example an older, working-class, disabled woman from a minority ethnic group faces overlapping disadvantages). Class in particular tends to run through all the other dimensions. Most sociologists therefore treat inequality as multi-dimensional, using Weber's flexibility and feminist and other insights to capture how the dimensions combine.

Examples in context

A strong answer treats age and disability as socially constructed, uses the social model of disability, and finishes with intersectionality, the idea that the dimensions of inequality combine.

Try this

Q1. Explain what is meant by 'ageism'. [6 marks]

• What the marker wants. A definition (AO1): ageism is prejudice and discrimination based on a person's age, affecting both the young and the old (for example stereotyping the old as incapable or the young as irresponsible), with the point that age is socially constructed, illustrated with an example.

Q2. Analyse two ways in which the social model of disability differs from the medical model. [12 marks]

• Cue. Two developed points: the social model locates disability in society's barriers (physical, attitudinal, institutional) while the medical model locates it in the individual's body, and the social model implies society must change to remove barriers while the medical model focuses on treating or managing the individual, each explained and linked to how disability is understood.