Globally, older women in all their diversity are contributing unrecognised yet critical support to their families, communities and economies through their paid and unpaid work. In poorer countries, they carry out this work with little or no choice over what they do, and often without support or recognition.
Age International’s new report “Older Women: the hidden workforce” listens and gives voice to older women’s experience of work in Ethiopia and Malawi and sets it within a wider context of the economic challenges facing older women in low and middle-income countries. The report sets out recommendations for how the UK Government and its partners can help to address this inequality.
We listened to the lived experiences of older women and know that the work they do is varied and vital yet lower paid and undervalued, and often including pressure from others to give extra time for caring and community work. We’re calling for their voices to be heard and their needs to be met.
The global COVID-19 pandemic exposed the inequalities and ageism that older women and men face in societies, as well as bringing to the fore the importance of care work and the unequal role of women in shouldering this work.
Many women, especially in lower-income countries, reach old age with few assets and savings and no access to a pension or any other kind state benefits. They contribute greatly to the economy through both paid and unpaid care and domestic work, yet the work they do is not valued by their communities and is consistently overlooked by policymakers.
This timely report from Age International shines a light on the experiences of older women across the globe, highlighting the vital contributions they continue to make through their paid and unpaid work, often in challenging conditions, facing double discrimination, not only on basis of gender but also on basis of age.
It is imperative that older women are supported to access decent work opportunities, and pensions, and that their voices are heard in the processes that shape public policy.
The report features in-depth interviews with older women and their communities in Malawi and Ethiopia, and highlights the multiple barriers many face when accessing their rights – including decent work and income security – due to ageism, sexism and power structures in their local communities and wider society.
Current strategies do not adequately recognise the roles of older women across the globe, who carry out relentless work with little or no choice, and often without support. Although these older women make substantial contributions when it comes to paid work and unpaid care and domestic work for their families, communities and economies, the low status they hold in their communities means many do not get the support they need to live in better health and with dignity. The report shows how older women are vital to their communities, households, and economies; as grandmothers, mothers, neighbours, volunteers, workers and carers but also as women – and human beings – in their own right.
The Sustainable Development Goals include commitments to achieve gender equality and “leave no one behind”, but these cannot be met without a greater focus on the rights and contributions of older women. Campaigns such as Generation Equality and efforts to deliver on the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals must consider older women in all their diversity, challenge damaging assumptions about older women and men, and adopt a life course approach in all public policy and development programmes relating to economic justice.
The report sets out a ten-point action plan for the UK Government and its partners to help achieve this.
Action must be taken, within the global recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, to ensure current and future generations of older women live in dignity and continue to contribute in the ways that matter to them; ensuring that they work out of choice rather than for survival or according to decisions made by others.
We listened to the lived experiences of older women and know that the work they do is varied and vital yet lower paid and undervalued, and often including pressure from others to give extra time for caring and community work. We’re calling for their voices to be heard and their needs to be met.
Over 7,300 people signed our Parliamentary Petition asking the UK Government to include older women in its International Development Strategy and address the specific barriers older women experience, showing that there is public support for doing more to help older people in low and middle-income countries.
The UK Government launched its International Development Strategy in May 2022, followed by the International Women and Girls Strategy in March 2023. Click to find out to what extent the two strategies consider and address the rights and needs of older women.
Response to UK Government's International Development Strategy
Response to FCDO Strategy on Women and Girls
This webinar used the Older women: the hidden workforce report as a starting point for discussion. Bringing together an exciting panel of experts, we discussed barriers to accessing economic rights older women face in low and middle-income countries, and policy solutions.
For our report, Older women: the hidden workforce we’ve listened to the voices of older women across the globe, including Ethiopia and Malawi, who work tirelessly for their communities and families.
Author of the report and Age International Policy Advisor Kate Horstead explains how the research behind the report was designed to centre and amplify older women's voices.
62-year-old Almaz shared with us what a typical day looks like for her, captured by photographer Michael Tsegaye.
Academic expert on gender and development, Diane Elson, who wrote the foreword to our report, sat down with us to discuss why older women's economic rights are so important.
