The changing socio-economic paradigm has led to a fundamental change in the way communities and society has organized itself. The breakdown of community values has created a new axis of vulnerability – age. Demographic data shows an increasing number of aged in the populations across the globe; and studies have established that these elderly persons, and specifically aged women, single women, face several problems and challenges and need increased social security protection like pensions, housing and healthcare support and innovative schemes.

The women's movement thus far has not yet engaged itself with issues of the ageing women like access to pensions, social security, housing, access to affordable and quality healthcare, etc. which now need our urgent attention. There is a need to mainstream the issues of the elderly women amongst all stakeholders like NGOs, CSOs, Government Departments, CSRs, Corporate Foundations etc. for developing sensitive policies, programs and innovations like pensions, housing, social security cover etc. to address the problems of the elderly and support them in their multiple needs.

There is a need to anchor this work in the South Asian perspective and strengthen linkages with groups from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The world is undergoing an increasing demographic transition where the number of females is outnumbering the number of males in terms of life expectancy. The ‘Feminization of Ageing’ is becoming even more problematic in developing countries such as India, where concerns related to ageing is accentuated by the socio-economic and cultural differences in the society.

It has become a matter of increasing urgency to look for ways to maintain and improve the functional abilities of ageing people, especially the elderly women, to help them cope independently in the community and ultimately, to raise the quality of their lives.

Some nascent steps in this direction have been initiated in recent past by Stree Shakti- The Parallel Force. The International Conference on “Ageing Women: Critical Challenges and Concerns” was organized in New Delhi from 26-28th August 2013 by Stree Shakti –The Parallel Force with the support of Help Age India and UNDP India.

As a way forward to the conference, Stree Shakti-The Parallel Force formed the South Asia Forum for Aged Women which aims at identifying innovative practices to support the elderly women groups, and to advocate for gender inclusive policy changes focusing on the aged with government agencies and departments and mainstreaming the issues and concerns of elderly women on the agenda of women’s groups, CSR, Corporate Foundations and relevant organizations. In India, the project duration is from November 2013 to July 2014 and is being supported by UNFPA.

The South Asia Forum for Aged Women with support of UNFPA is concentrating work in India advocating for aged women’s issues and concerns with women’s groups, CSR and Corporate Foundations, government and relevant agencies. To achieve this, a series of regional conferences and interactive meetings had been organized in New Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai and one in Kolkata to be held in April, in order to spread awareness for the cause.

An update from the conferences:

The Delhi meeting titled ‘Raising Awareness on Aged Women: Issues and Challenges’ was held on the 1st of February in collaboration with the National Resource Centre for Women in Janpath Hotel.

The Jaipur meeting titled ‘Aged Women: Issues and Challenges’ was held on 8th of February in collaboration with The Centre for Community Economics and Development Consultants Society (CECOEDECON), Jaipur. The conference was attended by 58 participants.

A Zonal Conference on 'Women and Ageing' on March 10th, 2014 in Mumbai in collaboration with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and the SNDT Women’s University.

The Kolkata conference was held on the 21st April 2014. The conference was in collaboration with Calcutta Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology.

The project intends to identify, document and collate innovations and good practices for supporting the aged women to lead a life of dignity and security. The good practices could be linked to implementing a policy or to provision of services like health care, housing, care-giving, income security, rights and entitlements and any other women empowerment related work that prepare them to deal with challenges at the end of their lives.

The selection of good practices is based on an assessment formed out of these criteria:

Scale - the project should have been implemented with a wider beneficiaries group that provides enough evidence for it to be a good practice

Effectiveness - the project should have the ability to bring about some visible or measurable change in the life of aged women

Innovative - the documentation should be able to indicate what is new and unique about the initiative

The Kolkata conference was held on the 21st April 2014. The conference was in collaboration with Calcutta Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology.

Replicability - the project should have the potential to be duplicated in other regions