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During the final decades of the 20th century, research into gender and ageing largely concentrated on the lived experience of older women. In this article we revisit the notion of gendered ageing by focusing on the differential experience of older men in later life, by comparing their social networks with those of older women. In particular we investigate older men’s involvement in social organisations: the intrinsic and extrinsic values they attribute to membership and how these conflate with their notion of masculinity. We argue that the importance of male identity in terms of self-esteem and independence persists and that, except for the minority of physically frail and financially disadvantaged older men, alternative ways of sustaining masculinity operate in later life.