Older women marginalised and unappreciated, research reveals

Society is failing to acknowledge the significant skills and abilities of older women, according to a study of 100 females in Manchester aged 50 and over.

The final report of Uncertain Futures, a research project led by Manchester Met alongside the University of Manchester and Manchester Art Gallery, highlights the inequalities faced by women later in life in relation to work, gender, age, race, disability and migration status, and calls for urgent action to redress the balance.

Unpaid caring responsibilities, volunteering to support others, and living with health conditions all impacted on the study participants’ working lives, often leading to them being overlooked, marginalised, and forced to take early retirement - with inevitable consequences on earning ability and life quality.

Uncertain Futures: 100 Women is the culmination of a four-year project involving 100 in-depth interviews with Manchester-based women who reported facing multiple inequalities over their lifetimes, and these are only worsening with time.

Its authors have issued key practical recommendations with respect to older women and work including pension top-ups when taking career breaks to care for family members, stronger flexible working laws, more affordable childcare, and greater recognition for unpaid work.

They’re also calling for organisations who use volunteers to be supported to move them into paid work, better equality laws which remove age-based discrimination, the introduction of right to work during the asylum process, and better job-seeking support services.

Dr Sarah Campbell, senior lecturer in health and social care at Manchester Met and lead Uncertain Futures researcher, said: “It is time to start taking older women’s contributions to society seriously. We need action to address the inequalities faced by women across their life-course that continue to see the enormous gender pensions gap. Inequalities need addressing now if we are to create more certain futures for older women.”

The project has been highlighted in a new United Nations progress report into their Decade of Healthy Ageing, which states that a key lesson of Uncertain Futures has been that ‘lack of protection against intersectional discrimination makes tackling ageism and creating age-friendly environments more challenging.’

Speaking of her personal situation, one Uncertain Futures participant, Lois, aged 56 and an unpaid carer to her mother who has dementia, said: “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. It’s harder than being a single mum, which I’ve done…but overall, do I think I’m valued? No, not at all.”

Of the women interviewed, 46% reported they were involved in voluntary work, and just over a third described undertaking some form of caring responsibility. Most of the women provided family care and had done so throughout their lives, while almost half disclosed living with a health condition or disability that had impacted their working lives.

Caring for children in earlier years had often negatively affected participants’ ability to work full time, and limited the work they could do. Many continued to have caring responsibilities later in life, sometimes supporting adult children with disabilities or caring for grandchildren or older relatives. Many were also volunteering to support others, often despite their own challenging life circumstances.

Uncertain Futures advisory group member and Chair of the Greater Manchester BME Network Atiha Choudry, added: “As a society we shouldn’t tolerative this level of unfairness, inequality, and discrimination. The reality is that it happens, has happened to these women, and continues to happen.

“We hope our Uncertain Futures project will influence some level of change. We want a better quality of life for women moving forward in terms of work.”