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Desperately
seeking succour
By
Shoma A Chatteri
The Statesman, September
9, 2003
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Ageing is a natural
process common to both sexes. Why, then, are women more vulnerable to the
miseries of old age, asks SHOMA A CHATTERJI
AGEING, it would seem, does not discriminate on grounds of gender. But a
closer look reveals the loopholes in that argument. In the Indian context,
it appears that men might not be as vulnerable to distress and miseries in
old age as women generally are. This is because women in our country form
a small percentage of the working population. They are thus denied the
retirement benefits that working men have access to when they grow old.
A survey conducted by the Calcutta Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology
revealed an interesting fact. While 61.23 per cent of the male respondents
cited economic problems as a major cause of worry after retirement, a
significant chunk of 40.9 per cent among the women claimed that they did
not anticipate any problems. This sounds ironical, especially in a social
environment where old women are constantly being edged out of their own
homes, and their children’s, once they are widowed.
Patriarchy ensures that a major share of movable and immovable assets
within an extended family is managed and controlled by the men in the
family. These assets are acquired in the names of their women — wives
and daughters-in-law — but purely for the purpose of tax evasion. These
women have no control over the assets even when the patriarch passes away
or becomes senile. The control automatically passes on to the son. In
nuclear families, the mother or unmarried older sister has to live with
grown-up offspring or siblings who have their own families. While some
children might look upon an ageing mother as a blessing in disguise —
unpaid babysitter, nurse, cook, all rolled in one — this is more the
exception than the rule.
Women constitute a significant majority of the elderly population in our
country. In the age-group of 60-64 years, there are 99 men to every 100
women. This is true for most developing countries. In the 80+ group, there
are 69 men to every 100 women. The position of single women is more
precarious because few of their relatives are willing to take care of
them. A majority of widows have no independent source of income and it
gets worse with age.
PN Mari Bhat of the Population Research Centre, Dharwad, concludes from
his study on “Widows and Widowhood Mortality in India” that widows
have a higher mortality rate than women whose husbands are alive. Around
50 per cent of widows in India are below the age of 60. The belief that
widows are taken care of by their parental families is a myth, especially
in rural India, where less than six per cent live with their in-laws or
parents, while 10 per cent live with their married daughters. Around 60
per cent get regular support from their sons, 16 per cent are cared for by
daughters, nine per cent by brothers, five per cent by parents and only
three per cent by in-laws. No study on widowhood gives an account of the
castaway widows of Varanasi and Vrindaban, shunned by their families for
good.
Pensions for widows are limited and arbitrary. The conditions of
eligibility and the amount differ from state to state. Kerala forks out a
meagre Rs 70 a month, regardless of the woman’s class, age or other
sources of income. The Karnataka government raised the sum from Rs 50 to
Rs 75 in 1994.
Traditionally, men and women, especially widowed women, have relied on
sons for support in old age. But changing behaviour patterns among the
young, resulting from the pressures of inflation, shortage of housing
space, declining importance of family ties and shooting costs of raising
children have eaten into the possible support aged women could expect from
their sons. In health care too, old women are greatly neglected, because
the focus is on family planning and mother-and-child care.
Within such a context, the UN Expert Group Meeting on Integration of
Ageing and Elderly Women into Development (1991) came as a pleasant
surprise. It took a number of steps towards harnessing the productive
capabilities of older women so that they were able to create and sustain a
financially independent future and their productivity could be used for
the betterment of the nation in general and the family in particular. It
was also acknowledged that major efforts had to be made to ensure the
access of elderly women to basic education and information on the ageing
process, learning skills – both traditional and non-traditional — and
retraining as and when called for.
In addition to formal education, the Participatory Rural Approval
programme allows for learning with and from older people, especially
women. Women have a perspective on their communities that is completely
different from the male point of view. This can make a greater impact on
the economic and social aspects of these communities. The PRA experiment
combines a number of approaches so that a community can conduct its own
analysis and planning and share its experience with professionals. It is
here that older women can be more helpful and productive than their male
counterparts.
Older women have the potential of making valuable contributions to society
as they can easily reach beyond the limited framework of their immediate
families. For example, they are often called upon to attend to the sick
and the dying. They also serve as transmitters of traditional modes of
learning and experience to the next generation. Knowledge of traditional
medicinal cures, pre- and post-natal health care for mother and infant,
hygiene, diet and nutrition are often handed down by them to their
progeny. Older women also contribute significantly to the maintenance of
traditions and values that need to be upheld for sustaining our cultural
roots. But such services go unrecognised and unpaid for because they
cannot be quantified in economic terms.
There are countless examples of elderly women all over the world who are
still actively taking part in rebuilding the lives of people traumatised
by disaster or war. Many elderly women have also been elected as the
administrative and/or executive heads of their respective states. Women
continue to cook, nurse, clean and take care of the rest of the family
even when they are well into their 60s. What’s more, grandmothers are
known to be the best educators for children, handing down to them tales
from mythology and history, of wisdom and fantasy, lessons unheard of in
formal educational institutions. Yet, these contributions are completely
ignored when the same women need support — emotional or financial —
from the very individuals they nurtured through their tender years.
Unfortunately, ageing, especially among women, is still regarded no more
than an inevitable biological process. Most women still consider menopause
as the end of the world. What we forget is that age is a sociological
construct. Its meaning and significance vary both historically and
culturally. It is time we challenged the stereotyping of ageing women as
an assumed homogeneity. Taking into account class, race and culture would
help counter biological factors. Enlightenment is not too far off, for
there has been growing research interest in this field, not only in the
experience and ethnography of the aged, but also in the specific
constructions of “old age” across cultures and through time, with
special attention to elderly women.
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