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In this paper, we argue that the biggest challenge facing an Ageing Australia is care, specifically, the labour shortages in the care industry and the high demand for care, which exceeds the supply. We propose that this situation has arisen out of the extremely divergent discourses about the need for care, from feminist to neoliberal, managerialist responses. The aged care context in Australia is predominantly female, because women live longer than men, and 90% of formal and informal carers are women. We therefore see the continuing relevance of a gendered view of care and believe that the feminist ethics of care is a theory which offers much to our understanding of ageing in Australia. To illustrate key issues for older people and their families within the aged care system in Australia, a case study is presented and referred to throughout the paper.

This paper presents an ethnographic case study that aims to understand the meaning of social participation in a neighbourhood for daily mobility in later life. In the study, the mobility of the participants of a senior-citizen project was monitored over 18 months. The project was founded as a result of a municipal district’s targeting of social sustainability. The results show that social participation had positive effects on the daily mobility of the participants. The implementation of broad-minded thinking from the municipality and the cooperation of various municipal actors were shown to be essential for the positive outcome of this project.