A Compendium of Essays: Has the Sisterhood forgotten older women? Edited by Sally-Marie Bamford and Jessica Watson A Compendium of Essays: Has the Sisterhood forgotten older women? Edited by Sally-Marie Bamford and Jessica Watson Contents Acknowledgements 1 Foreword Baroness Sally Greengross 2 Introduction Sally-Marie Bamford 4 Chapter I: Personal Reflections – Has the Sisterhood Forgotten Older Women Talkin’ ‘bout my generation. Lynne Berry 9 Reflections on feminism and ageing from the sandwich mum’s perspective. Helen Crofts 12 Has the sisterhood forgotten older women? Dr Ian Pearson 15 Ageing and women: what can men do? Jack Watters 18 Older women: on reinventing the future. Naomi Woodspring 21 Chapter II: Are Older Women Invisible? Oh, I didn’t see you there! Jane Ashcroft 24 Has the sisterhood forgotten older women? Sheila Gilmore MP 26 Invisible women: case studies across four generations. Mary Thoreau 28 Silver Action – talking across the generations. Catherine Long 31 Chapter III: Work and Finances How older women lose out in the pensions arena. Ros Altmann 34 The pensions gender gap – how the current system overlooks the contribution of many women. Anthony Thompson 37 A tale of mice and (wo)men: will current policies on extending working lives improve quality of life for all. Dr Christine Broughan 41 Not seen or heard? Older women in the workplace. Professor Wendy Loretto 44 Chapter IV: Social Isolation and Loneliness Do we only care about widows if they’re Scottish (widows)? Dr Dylan Kneale 48 Preventing and alleviating loneliness for older women. Laura Ferguson 52 Chapter V: Care and Carers Older women and care: are they invisible to the sisterhood? Michelle Mitchell 55 Older women carers – invisible and ignored? Heléna Herklots 59 Affective inequalities: older women’s obligation to love and care. Dr Loretta Crawley 62 Who cares? An older working carer reviews her experience in a changing world. Maria Parsons 66 The loss of the private realm. Belinda Brown 70 Chapter VI: Care Homes Destination care home. Lorna Easterbrook 73 Dignity in care for older women. Dr Rekha Elaswarapu 76 Chapter VII: Health and Wellbeing Active ageing and the challenge of dementia. Marina Yannakoudakis MEP 79 Bones, muscle groans and other unknowns. A call for joined-up thinking to solve women’s potential musculoskeletal cyclones – Peter Smitham, Dr Richard Weiler, Dr Catherine Holloway, Professor Allen Goodship 82 Forgetting older women with breast cancer hurts us all. Hazel Brodie and Rachel Bowden 86 Gender discrimination in biomedical research and clinical practice. Hildrun Sundseth 89 Older women and health. Dr Nicola Shelton 92 Evidence-based health care for older women: not quite there yet. Suzanne Wait 95 Just can’t wait: women’s age-related incontinence. Richard Day and Nina Parmar 98 Chapter VIII: Relationships and Intimacy Sex and the older person: more complicated than most people (including feminists) think. Geraldine Bedell 101 Sexuality and intimacy in middle and late adulthood. Dr Sharron Hinchliff 104 Chapter IX: Gender and Development Older women in low-and middle-income countries – forgotten by feminism? Bridget Sleap, Eppu Mikkonen-Jeanneret and Mark Gorman 107 The invisibility of older women in international development. Dr Valerie Lipman 111 Feminism’s pale shadows: older women, gender and development. Professor Ann Varley 114 Chapter X: The Future Research Agenda- Research Gaps and Opportunities We are older women too: under - recognition of older lesbians in research, social policy and provision. Susan Westwood 118 What has happened to older disabled women with learning difficulties? Jane Chelliah 121 The experience of ageism for older women. Isla Rippon 125 ‘Lest we forget’: what it means to be old and a woman. Professor Miriam Bernard 129 Acknowledgements We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed essays without you, this Compendium would not have been possible. We would also like to thank Jack Watters, (Vice President) at Pfizer in New York and Pfizer for supporting this project and their continued support in helping the ILC-UK to develop our equality and discrimination programme of work. We would also like to thank our colleagues Dr Dylan Kneale for advice on editorial content and design, David Sinclair for managing media communications associated with the project, Trinley Walker for his helpful comments on the manuscript and Lyndsey Mitchell who coordinated the International Women’s Day launch event in the House of Lords. For the design and production process we would like to thank Harry Ward. Please note all the opinions expressed in the essays are the authors’ own, however all errors and omissions are our own. If you have any comments on the Compendium, please do email: [email protected] supported by Pfizer 1 A Compendium of Essays: Has the Sisterhood forgotten older women? Foreword Baroness Sally Greengross, Chief Executive, ILC-UK First and foremost I would like to acknowledge the overwhelming support we have received to produce this Compendium and I would like to thank all the authors for their insightful and thoughtful contributions. Without them, this project would not have been possible and I am heartened to see old friends and now new friends of the ILC-UK coming together to celebrate International Women’s Day to endorse the advancement of the ‘cause’ of women at both the national and global level. You may not be aware, but the ILC-UK is part of a wider global family; we are a Global Alliance with 14 partners across the globe in the United States of America, Japan, France, the Dominican Republic, India, South Africa, Argentina, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Singapore, Israel, Brazil and China. And it is through such partnerships that we can promote and highlight the opportunities and challenges population ageing presents to modern society. After reading the Compendium I will be calling on our international friends at our next ILC Global Alliance Annual General Meeting to consider how we can work together to improve outcomes and interventions for women in our respective countries. Ageing research at the regional, national and international level needs to be disaggregated by gender and we must ensure ageing policies and programmes, where appropriate, incorporate a gender dimension in their design, delivery and evaluation. As a result of this Compendium, I would also like to articulate a call to action to establish an Older Women’s Policy and Research Action Alliance in the UK, to ensure the enthusiasm, expertise, interest and knowledge expressed by all the authors is not lost and we build on this collective momentum to establish a roadmap for future research and policy priorities together. On a more personal level, I do not believe the Sisterhood has forgotten older women and as someone of what one may delicately call “advancing years” myself, I have championed and witnessed significant advancements in the private and public sphere for women. A Compendium of Essays: Has the Sisterhood forgotten older women? 2 Nevertheless perhaps it is time we ‘regrouped’. We need to make sure we do not only concern ourselves with women as workers, child bearers, mothers and wives, but also go further and challenge the unhelpful assertions of a feminist generational divide. Feminists everywhere should embrace the demographic dividend and harness the potential of our older female population, while at the same time advancing and empowering dignity in older age. 3 A Compendium of Essays: Has the Sisterhood forgotten older women? Introduction Sally-Marie Bamford, Assistant Director, Research and Strategy, ILC-UK This Compendium of Essays to mark International Women’s Day was completed in eight weeks. During this time, it is estimated 1,232 women in India will have been killed for a dowry-related murder1, an average of 2,869 women aged over 60 will have died from violence, war and intentional injuries2 and over 78,400 girls and women will have died from causes related to childbirth, 99 per cent of them in developing countries3. In just eight weeks and this is a mere snapshot of the abuse, discrimination, fear, inequality and injustice and violence which forms the soundtrack of the lives of many millions of girls and women across the globe. As the Executive Director of UNICEF Carol Bellamy sagely commented: “The same number died yesterday, and the same number will die tomorrow – most of them in silence”4. A sobering and perhaps unorthodox start to a Compendium admittedly and yet it would be an unethical omission not to observe the wider context and motivation behind International Women’s Day. Every year on March 8th as part of International Women’s Day, actions, initiatives and events across the globe are held to highlight just how far our global societies need to travel to reach meaningful equality for women. Yet at the same time it also marks the often overlooked contribution of women both in the public and private domain and celebrates the achievements of so many in advancing the ‘cause’. It is set against this backdrop that this Compendium was formed; as a think-tank dedicated to interrogating the impact of demographic change, we felt it was time for a ‘stocktake’ to see just how well we are responding to the needs of older women. While it is widely acknowledged that the world is ageing, the intersection of age with gender has been historically ignored and it is only recently the ‘feminisation of ageing’ has sparked the interest of the academic and policy community alike. Invariably as we age, women and men share the same fundamental needs related to the protection of human rights and the need for food, shelter, access to health and social care services, dignity, independence and freedom from abuse. The evidence shows however that in comparison to older A Compendium of Essays: Has the Sisterhood forgotten older women? 4 men, older women are particularly susceptible to experiencing their later years living in poverty, being vulnerable to violence and abuse, lacking access to affordable care and being subject to the same prolonged inequalities and discrimination experienced earlier in their lives.