This issue paper was born out of a project that drew together those who work in two fields - elder abuse and violence against women (VAW) - to share wisdom, explore intersections, and reveal possibilities for further collaboration. It is intended as a tool to raise awareness about the abuse of older women. Although much of this data comes from Ontario, it is not intended as a description of abuse against older women in one particular region of Canada. It is designed to raise questions about what is revealed and what is concealed by different understandings of the issue and to examine ways of addressing the problem.
The complexities of abuse of older women are easily concealed behind common expectations about violence or abuse and by stereotypical assumptions about older women. Definitions of “domestic” violence, which shape service provision, frame it as perpetrated by an intimate partner, or spouse or spousal equivalent. This fails to recognize the place of children and other family members as the most intimate, and potentially the perpetrators of abuse in older women’s lives. Assumptions that older women are dependent make it harder to see the complex pictures of children and grandchildren dependent on the care of older women. Explanations of caregiver stress as the reason why family members injure the older woman rest on stereotypes of old, fragile or demanding women who need too much help and may conceal patterns of abuse that are life-long. Stereotypes of older women as frail and sick can mean that medical personnel and other service providers do not ask questions when injuries are evident and simply assume accidents or ill-health are the cause, leaving many women vulnerable to abuse.
When the terms used by anti-violence campaigns and service providers include only “abuse” or “violence,” and campaigns and services appear to be directed only towards young women, many older women living demeaning and controlled lives will not recognize their own experience as victims of violence or abuse. Older women tend to describe their situation using terms like “bad treatment,” being “taken advantage of,” or living with spouses and children who were “not kind,” and “not nice.” They often assume there is nothing to be done – “it is just the way it is.”[1]
This paper draws from three sources: older women who have experienced violence and abuse; professionals in the elder abuse and violence against women fields (activists, service providers and researchers); and literature. Four diverse older women who have lived through abuse spoke about their experiences in lengthy interviews in person or by phone. They each mentioned the value they found in telling their stories and their desire to make a difference for other older women. They chose to be referred to by pseudonyms. Researchers, activists, and service providers in the field participated in a day-long focus group referred to as the Focus Group throughout this paper. Four key informants in the field took part in interviews or followed-up with email correspondence after the Focus Group. Experts recommended a selection of literature that would capture key elements in the complex picture of abuse of older women and the ways it has been addressed.
The Social Context of Abuse of Older Women
Though the fields of elder abuse and violence against women both address issues of the abuse of older women, they have focussed and developed differently. Feminist activists have shaped the field of violence against women (VAW) whereas medical and social service professionals have sought to address elder abuse. Each field has arguably failed to pay close attention to some aspects of the problem – VAW focussed mostly on younger women as the victims of intimate partner abuse and the role of emotional and financial abuse in domestic violence has only recently been recognized by sectors such as criminal justice (Champagne, 1999). Similarly some sectors of the elder abuse field missed dynamics of sexual and physical abuse tending not to differentiate between them until recently. The net effect is a greater divide between the sectors than if the full range of violences which affect younger and older women had been recognized in each sector.
Activists argue that it is not acceptable to use a gender-neutral frame to conceptualize abuse of older women, insisting that such a frame ignores the particular dimensions of women’s experience. As Greta Smith, an activist based in British Columbia, clarified: “The work we are doing is about older women, it’s not about gender neutral ‘elder.’ I did not cease to be a woman because I went over 55” (Focus Group, Toronto, May 2005). Women have had different experiences from men throughout the lifespan, this does not change when they become older. If the gender neutral frame of “elder” is used, these particular experiences disappear from view.
The social context - the backdrop for the abuse of older women and ways to conceptualize it – was starkly revealed to me,[2] one day when I finished watching a powerful video on older women (OWLS, n.d.) to find the Oprah Show celebrating women who had “made themselves over.” These women were congratulated for their new look, their decision to wear makeup every day, to not “let themselves go,” and to look like their children’s sister, rather than their mother. This was a strange counterpoint to the older women I had just heard describing life finally free from abuse, a sharp reminder that in our social context older women are not invited to celebrate the wisdom of our years, or the lives we are living, but to separate ourselves from other older women: to delight in looking younger. Yet it is not surprising older women might want to look younger when we are invisible and framed by stereotypes of declining health, frailty and dependence, incompetence and foolishness. No wonder in Toronto, where many businesses come and go, the “Anti-Aging” store thrives. In interviews, in contrast with images that suggest being an older woman is utterly undesirable, older women in their sixties, seventies and eighties described themselves as feeling free of abuse and external control for the first time in their lives - some only because their husbands had died – and spoke of their pleasure in life. A mischievous sense of getting-away-with-something was revealed in their tone of voice and their eyes as they spoke of spending the best time of their lives, revelling in their first apartment alone or in the freedom to go where they wanted when they wanted.
Services for seniors tend to be functional, offering a range of practical resources for each problem. Few services for seniors are specifically for older women and even fewer are driven by older women or recognize the complexities of older women’s needs. Long before the different, yet intertwined, impacts of ageism and aging, women’s lives have been shaped by societies steeped in patriarchy and heterosexism, divided by class and caste, structured by colonialism and everyday racism, and riddled with the barriers of systemic ableism. Interviews revealed the contrasts between women who grew up in poverty and those whose early lives were lived with money and privilege, and the ways that class expectations and the relative availability of money and other resources shape the experience of aging and abuse.
[1] Phrases are from interviews with older women.
[2] I am a newcomer to older women’s issue, in my fifties, the daughter of an independent strong-willed mother in her nineties. I bring experience researching violence and learning and years as an activist in the adult literacy field. The link between these issues was revealed when I interviewed old friends from my local literacy program’s seniors’ group and heard about the violence woven throughout their lives.
Type/Format of Resource: Article
Category/Topic of interest: Woman Abuse; Older women abuse
Population Group: Friends & Family; Social Service Providers
Year of Publication: 2006