WUNRN
|
|
جلال
فونديشن JALAL FOUNDATION |
An
Afghan Women-led, Women-focused Organization
________________________________________________________________________
EMPOWERMENT OF AGEING WOMEN
Massouda Jalal
Founding Chairperson
of Jalal Foundation
and Former
Minister of Women, Afghanistan
I. IMPERATIVES OF EMPOWERING THE WORLD’S AGEING WOMEN
Recent population
statistics assert the imperatives of empowering ageing women all over the
world. Among other trends, data show a sharp upward direction in the growth of
older women’s population globally; and at a speed that is faster than
commensurate growths in other age groups.
The United
Nations Fund for Population (UNFPA) predicts that in the next 10 years, the
number of people over age 60 and above will surpass one billion. For the Asia-Pacific region including South
Asia, the population of older people is predicted to triple from 453 million in
2012 to 1.26 billion by 2050. During such period, it is estimated that one in
every four people in the region will be over 60 years old. More importantly,
the same data shows that women constitute 53.5 percent of the population aged
60 or older in the region. As the age go higher, the proportion of ageing women
to men also increases. At present, women already represent 61 percent of the
“oldest old” or 80 years and older age group[1][1].
This trend, which
also holds true for other regions of the world, shows that ageing has already
taken a feminized trend. Confronted with
a near future that will increasingly be populated by ageing women, we need to think strategically as early as
we can in order that our future older women could continue to have meaningful
influence and contributions to our families, communities, and countries.
II. DEFINING A FRAMEWORK FOR THE EMPOWERMENT OF AGEING WOMEN IN
THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION: The MIPAA and a Life-spectrum Approach
1.
Women-specific empowerment
provisions
MIPAA or the
Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing and its Political Declaration may
be considered as the major springboards in defining a framework for the
empowerment of ageing women globally.
These
international policy instruments were adopted in April 2002 by 159 governments.
Their priority directions are: (1) older persons and development, (2) advancing
health and well-being into old age, and (3) ensuring enabling and supportive
environments. They put emphasis on the role of governments in “promoting, providing and ensuring access to
basic social services, bearing in mind specific needs of older persons”.[2][2] More importantly, Article 5 of the Political
Declaration states that, “We reaffirm the
commitment to spare no effort to promote democracy, strengthen the rule of law
and promote gender equality…”. MIPAA
also provides that “Older women outnumber
older men, increasingly so as age increases. The situation of older women
everywhere must be a priority for policy action. Recognizing the differential
impact of ageing on women and men is integral in ensuring full equality between
women and men and to the development of effective and efficient measures to
address the issue. It is therefore critical to ensure the integration of a
gender perspective into all policies, programs, and legislation”.[3][3]
These provisions
serve as guiding principles to governments and international agencies in
ensuring that the differential needs of women and men are analyzed and taken
into account in the design and implementation of policies and actions for their
older population.
2.
Opportunities from the review
of MIPAA implementation
The implementation of MIPAA has
been under review in the recent years. The result of the review provides vital
information and insights that are crucial to the empowerment of ageing women in
various regions of the world. Captured in the UNFPA report entitled, “Ageing
in the 21st Century: A Celebration and A Challenge”, the
findings provide evidences on the differential impacts of ageing for women and
men. For the Asia-Pacific region, including South Asia, the report pointed out
that “older women are more vulnerable to
poverty than older men due to a combination of disadvantage throughout their
lives, including lower educational levels, limited participation in the formal
sectors, and the continued reliance on women in many societies to provide
unpaid care giving and other work.”
The review process also created
opportunities that are important in widening the advocacy for ageing women.
Among the many opportunities created during the regional review was the
adoption of resolution 67/5 by Member States of the Economic Commission on Asia
and the Pacific in May 2011 which calls for the
full and effective implementation of the MIPAA in the region and the
incorporation of a gender perspective into all policy actions on ageing and
strengthen the empowerment and legal protection of older people, in particular
of older women.[4][4] Likewise,
the MIPAA review in the Asia-Pacific region noted commendable achievements
which could serve as strong foundations in furthering the empowerment of ageing
women. For example:
· at least 21 countries have
already introduced national policies on older persons;
· 12 countries have established
special bodies on ageing within ministries; and
· several countries have made
progress in improving social protection and care for older people, such as
Republic of Korea’s Second Basic Plan on Low Fertility and ageing society which
pointed to the need to develop a policy on employment that can tap into the
professional knowledge and skills of older women as well as on the expansion of
pension rights for older women.
Among
the general recommendations of the region, the need to support older women in
their role as primary caregivers, address their health condition and reduce
their vulnerability to poverty, social isolation and violence and abuse were
highlighted. The recommendations also called for the collection and analysis of
data that are disaggregated by sex, disability, and economic status as well as
age.
3.
Other possibilities to empower ageing women
through MIPAA
In
addition to the above mentioned gains, it is extremely important to flesh out
in detail the gender dimensions of all other actions that have been proposed in
the general recommendations to empower the ageing population in the
Asia-Pacific region. Below are examples of actions that we could advocate to
further promote the empowerment of ageing women within the context of the
recommendations for MIPAA implementation in the region:
§ National
mechanisms on ageing
- State Members should ensure that their national mechanisms for the promotion
of ageing persons are equipped with capacity for gender sensitive policy
making, implementation, monitoring and budgeting. A regional program may be
initiated to train key staff of national mechanisms on ageing in this regard.
An on-line introductory, interactive, didactic and self-paced e-course on the
empowerment of the ageing women may also be made available to them. Gender
responsiveness and empowerment of ageing women should be explicitly reflected
in the mandate and functions of such mechanisms and in the job description of
staff, especially the decision makers and senior technical officials.
§ Older
people’s associations –
In
supporting the development of older peoples’ associations and community
mechanisms for hearing the voices of older people, attention should be given to
proportionate representation of ageing women in the management and leadership
of such bodies as well as their equal participation in community activities and
decision making.
§ Comprehensive
and universal protection systems – A system for the valuation of care-giving within
the household should be studied with the end-view of developing a scheme to
provide social protection to family members who are engaged in the provision of
unpaid care to other family members.
Governments should also consider implementing a home-visit program for
older people who live alone, such as parents of overseas workers, to ensure
that they are able to meet contingencies in life through proper referral,
information, and support in regularly communicating with relatives, especially
during crises.
4.
A life-spectrum approach
Ageing is another layer of the many
factors that already bear down upon the status of women in society. I believe
that in conceptualizing a framework for the empowerment of older women, we need
to pay very close attention to these age-related factors, not only during the
older years, but throughout women’s life spectrum.
For this reason, we should not only
think of what we can do within the framework of MIPAA. We should also consider
the importance of the many activities that are already going on in the field of
gender equality and the empowerment of girl children, female adolescents and
women in general. Within such initiatives, we need to incorporate an ageing
perspective to ensure that the female population is able to acquire the skills,
support systems, knowledge, and status that they need to lead the increasingly
ageing population of the future.
Women who were born in 1990, for
example, are only 23 years old today but they are the first generation of women
to jump into the 1.26 billion mark of ageing women in the Asia-Pacific region
by 2050. Right now, they are preoccupied with living their life as young adults
without realizing that they have the potential and responsibility to serve as
the pilot generation for older women’s leadership in the next 37 years. We could target them as a primary group to
carry the torch and serve as model of how women should be, as ageing
people. We need such a model generation
to demonstrate to the rest of the women and to the society in general an
entirely transformed vision of ageing women – from being treated as used, worn
out, useless, burden, dependent, and weak to being looked up to for wisdom,
strength, inspiration, and power.
Within this age group, we could
ignite a strong awareness of the scenario predicted by population statistics.
We should inspire them to embrace a new vision that will make ageing a positive
destination that women should look forward to, rather than fear, deny or avoid.
Among Hollywood women, there is a trend which says that “40 is the new 20” in
terms of looks. We could also make 60 as the new 30, not in terms of looks but
in terms of a life-stage of increased autonomy, empowerment, productivity,
leadership and self-fulfillment as women.
There are so many more strategic
actions that we could do to add an ageing perspective into our interventions
for girl children, female adults, women, and even their male counterparts. For
example, interactions could be deliberately promoted among associations of girl
children and female senior citizens to enable girl children to learn from older
women’s experience and encourage them to enlist in the new vision of ageing for
women. We could also train older women
and promote their appointment into governing boards of NGOs for female
adolescent. We could also call upon all our networks to examine their current
efforts on women’s empowerment and gender equality to determine ways of
incorporating a perspective on older women’s empowerment into their programs
and projects. The possibilities are many and exciting. And their potential
outreach and impacts are enormous.
5. Lobbying for an International
Convention for Older People
Given the imperatives of
promoting the empowerment of ageing women all over the world, the region should
support the global campaign to adopt an international convention for older
people. The implementation of MIPAA demonstrated that while an international
Plan of Action is helpful, it is not enough. Although there have been positive
gains in the past, the absence of MIPAA’s binding effect may have been a
factor for its tepid implementation in some countries.
According to HelpAge,
unprecedented demographic ageing means that the number of people who may
experience age discrimination and violation of their rights in old age is
likely to increase. The adoption of an international convention on the rights
of older people is therefore necessary because it would:
§
provide a
definitive, universal position that age discrimination and ageism are morally
and legally unacceptable,
§
provide clarity on
governments' human rights obligations towards older people,
§
create an
enforceable monitoring mechanism to hold those in authority to account for
their actions towards older people,
§
put age
discrimination and older people's rights higher up on governments',
donors' and NGOs' agendas, and
§
encourage a shift
in attitude from older people being considered recipients of welfare to rights
holders with responsibilities[5][5].
In this connection, women’s
organizations like ours can launch a campaign in our respective countries to
support the regional and global initiatives towards an international convention
on the rights of older people. We could engage the media to educate our people
to prepare for the worrisome scenario that is predicted by statistics on world
population. We can even talk to our governments and send lobby letters to the
concerned bodies of the United Nations to strengthen the international lobbying
on this matter. We can also forge alliances around this agenda, sign an online
petition, and get all our networks to do the same. We can do many things and we
should do them right away. In the meantime, the good practices of other
countries in empowering ageing women should be documented and disseminated
regionally and internationally so that countries like mine could learn and draw
inspiration from them.
CONCLUSION
Paradoxically,
while we know that ageing is an inevitable course of life, we still live our
younger years without sufficient regard for our needs when we reach our older
years. Some people continue to deny that they are already ageing unless the
diminishing efficiency of their body functions tells them so. Some people even live as if they are not
going to grow old. But even in a country that is constantly battered by war
like Afghanistan, where people do not expect to live beyond the present, we
still see a substantial proportion of older population – proof of the fact that
ageing is here to stay and whether we like it or not, we are growing older
every day.
This
conference is an important step in getting the issue of ageing and the
importance of empowering women into the realm of our consciousness. Ageing is not something to avoid or deny, but
something to prepare for. Empowerment of
women is one way to do so. While we still have enough opportunities to create
for them an empowering life during their twilight years, the most effective
measures should begin when they are still young. Thus, the empowerment of ageing women cannot
be divorced from the empowerment of the female population across their life
spectrum. En enabling environment that empower and support female members of
society to attain autonomy, raise their voice, make decisions, access and
control resources, and constantly interact with people and institutions
throughout their lifetime is one of the most effective strategies we should
continue. This way, we can transform the
older years into a stage of life that women could look forward to - not with
anxiety or fear – but with anticipation of self-fulfillment, peace of mind, and
greater appreciation of life.