Older Women in Europe: A Human Rights-Based Approach (Social Perspectives on Ageing and Later Life)

This book is about older women’s strength, freedom, tenacity, determination, resilience, independence, social and political involvement and, in particular, it is about re-imagining ageing.

Older women represent the great majority of older people. The book describes instances of age and gender discrimination and examples of social inclusion and protagonism of older women in Europe. It solicits a change in perspective, focusing on the necessary societal changes to make space to older people and older women in particular. How is society going to address age and gender discrimination in social and institutional settings? How should work settings change to effectively make space to older workers and in particular older women? How should the pension system change? How could public health systems could provide effective care to older people and be sustainable?

This edited collection focuses on older women’s rights rather than their needs, adopting a human rights based approach. Preservation of older women’s dignity, autonomy and security is its central topic, that is, ensuring that their rights are recognised. This collection offers insights valuable to a wide array of human rights activists, professionals, policymakers and social scientists, and older women themselves.

Isabella Paoletti, PhD is a researcher at CRIS (Social Research and Intervention Center), Perugia, Italy. Her research interests are informed by discourse analysis, ethnomethodology and ethnography. She has published extensively on gender and ageing; her publications include Being an Older Woman: A Study in the Social Production of Identity (2020, reprint).