Over time, they also lose status. For many elderly, this occurs as their purchasing power erodes due to inflation and their standard of living declines. For many, it also occurs as their knowledge and skills become obsolete. We also tend to isolate the elderly. We create elderly ghettos when we build high-rise apartment buildings restricted to elderly and disabled occupants.
Most churches do.
That keeps them out of our way and out of our sight. We provide many social services and other services for senior citizens at different locations than we provide similar services to younger persons who need them. But the structures we created during our youth-oriented period that were designed to deny aging and death by keeping them out of sight are still very much with us. If we can turn now to gender stratification, it should be obvious that women are not equal to men in this or any other society that has strong patriarchal traditions and roots. In almost every state in the United States, women and children were the legal property of their husbands or fathers until sometime in this century.