Breaking down the question
This twenty-mark question has two connected parts. The first asks why active ageing has become a glocal goal — the coined term glocal signalling that it is simultaneously a global policy agenda and a locally adapted one. The examiner wants you to explain both the demographic reasons for its global rise and the reasons it is reshaped in local contexts. The second part asks you to evaluate a claim: that elderly care-giving is disproportionately gendered in developing countries, with the closing why demanding justification.
Both parts must be answered fully and with equal weight. The connecting thread is that active ageing, as a policy ideal, unfolds within care arrangements that are themselves deeply gendered, so the two halves speak to each other.
How to approach it
Begin by defining active ageing as the World Health Organization does — optimising opportunities for health, participation and security to enhance quality of life as people age. Explain its rise as a response to global population ageing driven by demographic transition, and explain the glocal character: a universal goal adapted to differing cultural, familial and economic settings.
Then turn to the gendering of care. Agree, with qualification, that care-giving falls disproportionately on women, and ground this in the gendered division of labour, kinship structures and the weakness of formal care provision in developing countries. Draw on scholars of gender and care and close with the implications for policy.
Model answer
Active ageing has become a glocal goal because population ageing is now a worldwide phenomenon that nonetheless plays out differently in each society. The concept, promoted by the World Health Organization, refers to optimising opportunities for health, participation and security so that people can remain productive, engaged and autonomous into old age, rather than being treated as passive dependants. Its global rise reflects demographic transition: falling fertility and lengthening life expectancy have increased the share and number of older persons across both developed and developing nations, straining pension systems, health services and family support. Faced with this shared challenge, international bodies have promoted active ageing as a common framework.
Yet the goal is glocal rather than simply global because it must be adapted to local realities. In wealthy societies with strong welfare states, active ageing may emphasise extended working life and formal community participation. In developing countries such as India, where formal social security is thin and the family remains the primary institution of old-age support, the same goal is refracted through kinship obligation, intergenerational co-residence and community and religious life. The universal ideal is thus localised — pursued through different institutions and meanings in different settings — which is precisely what the term glocal captures.
On the second question, the claim that elderly care-giving is disproportionately gendered in developing countries is largely persuasive. Care work — feeding, bathing, nursing, emotional support and daily supervision of the aged — falls overwhelmingly on women: on wives, daughters and daughters-in-law. This reflects the entrenched gendered division of labour, in which nurturing and domestic work are culturally assigned to women. Leela Dube's studies of kinship show how women's roles and dependence are structured across the life course, so that care of the elderly becomes an expected extension of women's domestic responsibility. Arlie Hochschild's analysis of the emotional labour of care further illuminates how such work, though demanding, is devalued precisely because it is performed by women without recognition or pay.
Several features of developing countries sharpen this gendering. Formal, institutional care for the elderly is scarce and often unaffordable, so care remains a household matter, and within the household it defaults to women. The persistence of joint or extended families, even as they weaken, concentrates caring duties on daughters-in-law. Female labour-force participation, where it exists, is frequently combined with unpaid care rather than relieved of it, producing a double burden. And because women themselves live longer yet with fewer independent resources, as Dube's work on female dependence suggests, they may end life as both the primary givers and, in widowhood, the most vulnerable receivers of care.
The implication is that any pursuit of active ageing in developing countries must reckon with this gendered structure of care. Promoting the dignity and participation of the elderly cannot be separated from recognising, supporting and more equitably sharing the caring labour on which their well-being depends. Emerging concerns around the ageing population, care and social protection are examined further in the notes on emerging population issues.
The considered conclusion is that active ageing has become a glocal goal because population ageing is universal yet locally experienced, and that care-giving in developing countries is indeed disproportionately gendered, rooted in the division of labour, kinship structure and the weakness of formal provision.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners expect both halves answered with equal care and the coined word glocal properly unpacked — showing that active ageing is at once a global agenda and a locally adapted one. On care-giving, the strongest scripts agree with the claim but justify it through the gendered division of labour, kinship and the absence of formal care, rather than asserting it. Citing scholars of gender and care such as Dube and Hochschild demonstrates conceptual depth, and a conclusion that links the two parts — active ageing resting on gendered care — earns a top-band result.