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Women's One World

By Marcia L. Mason

Older Women: The Invisible Population

An elder is a person who is still developing, still growing, still a learner, still with potential, whose life continues to have within it promise for and connections to the future.
-Aging magazine, Sept.-Oct. 1981

With improving health and hygiene, people are living longer. Coupled with declining fertility rates, longer life expectancy is altering the structure of societies. The aging of populations is now a worldwide phenomenon, more evident in developed countries but occurring more rapidly in developing countries.

In the 75 years from 1950 to 2025, the worldwide elderly population (persons 60 years of age and older) will have increased from 200 million to 1.2 billion, or from eight to 14 per cent of the total global population. The ranks of the "old old" (those 70 and above) will have grown from 13 million in 1950 to 137 million in 2025. Total world population will have increased by a factor of a little more than three, while the elderly will have grown by a factor of six and the "old old" by a factor of 10.

To age successfully, countries need to adjust their programs for housing and physical infrastructure, health and hygiene, income security and employment, education and training, social welfare and the family. They need to examine the situation of older women, who generally have fewer entitlements than men, while outliving them. Societies must also provide support to informal caregivers, especially those within the family, while helping train them to meet the complexities and challenges of aging. Overall awareness can be enhanced through improved media reporting on the aging process.

Being the first to age, the developed countries are still adjusting policies and programs, especially for the very old. The developing countries, projected to age more quickly in the coming decades than developed countries have aged in the past, are only gradually taking steps to respond to this shift.

The lengthening human lifespan invites fresh thinking in regard to the intrinsic value of life's many stages, from infancy to old age. One's final years should be a time for integrating the experiences of earlier years and encouraging younger generations. It is a time for taking on useful and possibly new social roles. It is also a time for enjoying family and community, especially when illness or frailty impedes an active role in society.

A Brief History: The Unseen Women's Issue

Despite a long history of United Nations' concern with the status of women, the needs and contributions of older women have remained largely unidentified.

The question of aging first came before the global community in 1948, when Argentina presented a draft declaration on old-age rights to the General Assembly of the United Nations. A report entitled "Welfare of the Aged: Old Age Rights" was published in 1950.

It was not then evident that the aging population in both the developed and developing countries would come to constitute such a substantial proportion of human society. Thus, 20 years passed before the question was once more placed on the General Assembly agenda, this time at the initiative of Malta in 1969. Discussions concerning the status of the aging continued through the 1970s and led to the convening in Vienna of the World Assembly on Aging in 1982. There, an international action plan was adopted; it became the first global policy instrument on aging.

Since the plan's adoption, the U.N. Center for Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs has monitored its implementation and reported to the General Assembly on a yearly basis. In addition, every four years the center conducts a global survey that assists in appraising the plan's implementation.

In 1985, a key provision was added to the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. For the first time, aging was recognized as a process in which "the professional and family roles of women are undergoing fundamental change. Aging, as a stage of development, is a challenge for women. In this period of life [they] should be enabled to cope in a creative way with new opportunities."

The Nairobi Mandate further declared: "For elderly women... their longer life expectancy frequently means an old age aggravated by economic need and isolation... possibly with little or no prospect of paid employment.... [The Forward Looking Strategies] note the need for long-term policies directed towards providing social insurance for women in their own right."

The 1990s promised to be for the aging what the 1960s were for youth-a decade of high visibility on the world stage. The United Nations General Assembly designated 1 October as the International Day for the Elderly and 1999 as the International Year for Older Persons.

On 16 December 1991 the General Assembly adopted a resolution containing the United Nations Principles for Older Persons. Its aim is to add life to the years that have been added to life. Governments were encouraged to incorporate the principles of age-related independence, participation, care, self-fulfillment, and dignity into their national programs.

Despite these efforts to promote visibility, older women had no specific place on the agenda of either the recent Copenhagen Social Summit or Beijing Women's Conference.

Older women at risk

Older women are at risk, enduring a precarious existence near the margins of mainstream society. A large proportion live at or near the poverty line, and the problems of poverty are compounded by liabilities imposed by nature and by society as a whole. These disadvantages are often preventable, or at least remediable.

Often overlooked, older women appear to be the victims of their own longevity. Even in developed countries, the wealthy widow living out her years in comfort is a rarity. She, too, is subject to mounting, sometimes catastrophic, health care costs. In some cases, health care in the final years of life can cost as much as all the past years combined. Less serious medical problems can also strain even the most ample budget, and ultimately the resources of other family members or public health facilities are unable to offer adequate long-term care.

Debates on the role of governments in health care have, with justification, focused on primary care and short-term acute care. Care for the elderly has generally been deferred, becoming a ticking demographic time bomb.

Health care is only one of several problems faced by the older woman. They vary widely among social groups, from country to country, and from rural to urban areas.

Some result from the profound changes wrought by a more mobile society, such as the decline of the multi-generational family.

Some are psychological. For example, when her children move away, the older woman is often left isolated. (Widowed men are more likely to remarry than are women in the same circumstances.) Regardless of how independent she was in her younger years, she is then subject to depression and other forms of stress that jeopardize her health.

Some problems are institutional in nature, such as the lack or loss of a job. In the industrialized nations, where social security is widely available, the proportion of women over 65 in the work force is steadily declining. Outdated technical skills are likely to be factors in their voluntary or involuntary retirement. Whatever the cause, the results are loss of income and perhaps more important, a perceived loss of status as well.

What does the future hold for older women?

The process of reintegrating older women into society is enormously complex and will vary widely from country to country. Adoption of a broadened concept of work-to include voluntary service-might provide a partial solution. Older women's traditional social skills could also be employed in community day care or health facilities.

This would be a "win/win" situation, providing needed public services as well as a sense of productive participation. Not least, intergenerational contacts would be initiated and maintained, producing a valuable learning experience for children and an attractive alternative both to individual isolation and to the potentially debilitating lifestyle of an age-segregated retirement community.

Aging has been treated as an arbitrary and gender-blind chronological boundary; it is rarely, if ever, seen as part of the longer process of human life, one that is experienced differently by men and women.

A major problem is a lack of reliable data. If statistics on women are scarce, for older women they are almost nonexistent. Much more comprehensive research is needed on the actual financial and health status of older persons.

In the years to come, as women become better educated and as economic opportunities are less limited by the physical differences between the sexes, women will be able to contribute far more and for much longer. Their potential should be factored into policy planning at all levels.

Why has it taken so long to even recognize the problem? Indeed, under a system of world laws, redress of these inequities would have been rectified as would so many other ills of this inequitable global society.

"There is something about taking in the ending that changes your values-you are empowered by it. You are less willing to compromise. You are more determined to make your life meaningful and to refuse to distort in any way who you are in order to please....The power of the old woman is not being afraid to die, being conscious of all of her life, being in charge of her life...."
-Author Barbara MacDonald, from an interview published in Women and Aging, 1995

(Much of the information in this article is derived from INSTRAW News: Women and Development, Nos. 22 and 23, 1995.)

Marcia L. Mason is a feminist, Quaker, peace activist, world citizen, and World Syntegrity Project alumna who lives in Burlington, Vermont.


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