[Women as the target group of social policies regarding aging: equal treatment, equal opportunity, equal risk?]

Specialized gerontological discourse may promote misinterpretations of characteristic problems of old age as to their causes and effects. Existing quantitative relations tend to camouflage chances and risks; isolated analysis of old age does not make apparent the extent to which the elderly themselves share positions which ultimately lead to their relative neglect as a group in society. Equal opportunity for women seems bound to developments towards a market organization of service supply and demand for service and support, up to now widely informal or exchanged well below market value, with women as the main service providers as well as service recipients.