In the 1990s, the World Health Organization adopted the term ''active ageing'', which currently represents a key vision of old age in Western societies facing the situation of demographic ageing. The meaning of the idea of active ageing is based on the concept of individuals actively and systematically influencing the conditions of their ageing through selfresponsibility and self-care. The aim of this article is to map how the idea of active ageing is constructed and the implications it presents with regard to the way in which seniors relate to their experience of old age. It concentrates on a specific segment of senior-oriented social services (centres for seniors that offer leisure time activities and educational courses) that represent an institutional context for the manifestation of the discourse of active ageing. A three-year ethnographic study was conducted in two such centres in the Czech Republic. The article focuses on various strategies for the disciplining of the ageing body. It points out that these disciplinary practices are an integral part of the daily running of the centres and that the seniors who intensively engage in them have internalised the idea of an active lifestyle as the most desirable lifestyle in old age. Active ageing was constructed by them as a project that must be

Centres for seniors offering leisure-time activities currently represent significant actors that translate the idea of active ageing into a particular approach to seniors. Despite the fact that active ageing is now represented by the state and providers of social services as the universally desirable way of ageing, the significantly smaller numbers of male clients was identified as a marked feature of such organisations. A three-year ethnographic study was conducted at two centres in the Czech Republic which offer seniors-only leisure-time activities strongly grounded in the idea of active ageing. The method of participant observation was used, and 47 in-depth interviews were conducted with the centres' clients and employees. The higher participation by women in the centres and the role they attribute to such organisations in their lives is analysed in the context of their previous gendered biographies. Gender patterns embedded in the way daily activities at the senior centres are organised, as well as in the idea of active ageing itself, are highlighted. Despite the seeming invisibility of gender as a principle that structures the way these centres are run, they are in fact gendered organisations, where gender emerges as a basic principle affecting the chances of participating in active ageing as presented by the centres.

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Deep demographical shifts in western societies are significantly inf luencing the patterns of family life including the various forms of solidarity between generations. At the same time, we are facing significant changes in the social representation of ageing, which also inf luence the ways in which the roles of seniors in society are perceived and how the meaning of old age is constructed. The paper highlights the significance of these changes for the possible (re)definition of grandparenthood. It discusses the ways in which these demographical changes, the current heterogeneity of family life, and changing representations of ageing can affect the practices and meanings of grandparenthood. Simultaneously, it points out the need to analyse grandparenthood as a role which is strongly gendered.

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