One thing I notice about Senior Women...

[Hexen]

Apart from what I noticed based on the title of this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/grandmother-hassled-schoolbus-t172897/index.html), ever noticed that society calls Senior/Old Women "Grandma"/"Grannies"? Why is that? We don't actually call Senior Men "Grandpas" or anything that. It's one evidence that the double standard exists in our society where women are categorized into to the child rearing housewife stereotype and calling older women "Grannies" kinda proves it.

Has anyone noticed this?

[Anarcho-Brocialist]

I grew up on the South Side of Kansas City, and we called every elder man 'Pops' and woman 'Ma'.

[Drosophila]

Well that woman actually is a grandmother, but I still get what you mean.

[Blake's Baby]

It's more a trope than a stereotype I think. Not sure it can really be a 'stereotype' if the majority of women over the age of 60 actually are grandmothers, though this is an impressionistic account I'll grant you as i can't find figures. In Britain at least, there's a constant refrain about how 'grannies' will be affected by changes to the tax-laws etc (the recent 'granny tax' debacle - not grandad tax - being a case in point).

2 reasons I suspect it's generally 'grannies' not 'grandads', but also 'grannies' not 'pensioners' or 'senior citizens' (we've given up the term 'OAPs' it seems, which stands for 'old-age pensioners':
the first is that women tend to live longer than men, and therefore there are more 'grannies' alive than 'grandads' (whether or not these people actually have grandchildren is niether here nor there of course, and I can't find accurate figures) - in Britain too, the state retirement age has historically been lower for women than for men; so the number of women aged 60+ who are still alive is greater than the number of men aged 65+ who are still alive, by some margin;
the second is that everyone loves their granny and the emotional appeal of using 'grannies' is that it makes people think, 'if that was my granny i'd be really mad about that', as opposed to 'a grandad tax, eh? I wonder what my grandad would have made of that given he died of Miner's Lung in the 1950s', or maybe 'a grandad tax, eh? Never mind, he'll go down to his shed and make something to get round it with bits of string he's carefully saved and old copper tubing from a WWII submarine'. And 'pensioner tax' would be more like 'what, those moaning old gits, I have to pay taxes so they should too, they already get free teeth and hip replacements, ungrateful old bastards'.

But, I totally take the point about reducing women to the status of 'former breeders' and defining them by their families.

[DDR]

Apart from what I noticed based on the title of this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/grandmother-hassled-schoolbus-t172897/index.html), ever noticed that society calls Senior/Old Women "Grandma"/"Grannies"? Why is that? We don't actually call Senior Men "Grandpas" or anything that. It's one evidence that the double standard exists in our society where women are categorized into to the child rearing housewife stereotype and calling older women "Grannies" kinda proves it.

Has anyone noticed this?

In spain is normal to call old people abuelos (grandfathers), fem. abuela, masc. abuelo. So maybe is a cultural thing rather than sexism.

[Lynx]

I'm not aware of any usage like this, not with people who are not kin.

[Red Rabbit]

Going by what the elderly are called where I grew up, I think us girls lucked out with "grannie" rather than "old fart", like the men. xD

[Agent Ducky]

Like Blake's Baby said, it seems to me more of a trope. That the cultural image of a grandmother is like this sweet old nurturing lady that people are more likely to feel sympathetic to, that most people have/had a grandmother that they knew and probably respected, so it's an image that most people could, in theory, relate to.

[Tim Cornelis]

I often here senior men called "grandpa." What else would you call them?

In the Netherlands we also say oma (grandma) and opa (grandpa). It's not really formal, but I have no idea what other words are used for them.