Older Women: In Search of a Human Rights Definition

This was an article for my recurring column, Words That Are Trending, for the newsletter of the Sub-committee on Communications, NGO Committee on Ageing/NY, www.NGOCOA-NY.ORG

Today we are at a tipping point regarding the narrative around the term "olderwomen," which is causing confusion and prevarication over the need to guarantee equity and rights officially. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and later works asserts that the meaning of a word can only be taken from its use.

In current usage, we have conflated a noun (women) and an adjective (older)and expressed it as a single concept, open to interpretation and conflicting use. As such, the term has not captured the hearts and minds of humanitarians, policymakers, and lawmakers, as have phrases like "the rights of the disabled" or "the rights of children."

According to The National Association of Baby Boomer Women, older

women in the US comprise 38 million of the "healthiest, wealthiest, and best-

educated generation of women in US history." The 2020 report by World's

Women, "The reality of aging itself is not even constant. Thanks to medical

advances, improved nutrition, and less demanding lifestyles, 65-year-olds in

most countries can expect not only longer lives but more years in good health

than their parents or grandparents."

From Maye Musk, the 74-year-old model featured on the cover of the Sports

Illustrated Swimsuit issue, to female heads of state like 75-year-old Sheikh

Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh, 64-year-old Prime Minister of Tunisia

Najla Bouden, and the US's 82-year-old Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi,

along with dozens of others world leaders, older women seem to be making

enormous headway.

But contrast these powerful "older women" with older women begging in the

streets for food in India and Pakistan, abandoned by their families as they are

too costly to support. The plight of these older women is graphically described

by Barbara Crossette, calling for more action to actualize The United Nations

Sustainable Goals agenda, which highlights the rights of older women

worldwide. Action to Protect Older Women's Rights Has Stalled in the

UN General Assembly (2020.) See also, Older Women Rock the World: The

Right to Participation and Those Who Make It Happen (OEWG-12 Side Event)

April 12, 2022.

Indeed, progress in official recognition of the rights of older women, such as

through a Convention, is slow. The World's Women 2020: Trends and

Statistics summarize the absence of progress in the rights of older women

after 25 years since the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for

Action.

Illiteracy is a major issue for older women. Older women who cannot

read or write did not become illiterate as they aged. They never received schooling when they were children. According to UN Women, the

inequality gender gap starts at birth and continues for a lifetime with

lower pay, fewer economic rights, and lack of education.

The gender wage gap "is estimated to be 23 percent. This means that

women earn 77 percent of what men earn...Women also face the

motherhood wage penalty, which increases as the number of children a

woman has increases."

A third of women's work globally is in agriculture in poorer

countries, making work harder to sustain as they age because it requires

intense physical labor.

Violence and harassment at work affect women regardless of

age, location, income, or social status. The economic costs to the

global economy of discriminatory social institutions and violence against

women are estimated to be approximately USD 12 trillion annually.

Even at the highest levels, women face discrimination. According

to a 2020 report of World's Women, women "held only 28 percent of

managerial positions globally in 2019 – almost the same proportion as in

1995. Among Fortune 500 corporations, only 7.4 percent, or 37 Chief

Executive Officers, were women."

The dependency ratio, the "distribution between working age versus

young and old (dependent) populations," is a matter of how long women

work and if they are allowed to be gainfully employed. Age Structure,

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

We must develop a new use case for the term older women,

reflecting a societal obligation rather than an individual description.

In her February 2022 report, Supriya Akerkar writing for the Programme and

Ageing Unit (PAU), United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs

(UN DESA), New York, concludes, "Developing diverse gendered understanding

of aging needs sensitive methodologies that can capture the lived diverse

experiences of older women...over their life course. A new methodological

framework ... can be useful to uncover gendered ageing as a process, and to

uncover diverse lived realities of older women..."

Social philosophy, not semantics, must give meaning to the term

"older women." If we are to make sincere progress regarding what has

already been stated as a United Nations goal-defining and protecting the rights

of older women, it is time to acknowledge that we know who we mean, what we

mean, what needs to be done, and how to make it so.