The United Nations marks international days and weeks as occasions to educate the public on issues of concern, mobilise political will and resources to address global problems, and celebrate and reinforce the achievements of humanity. The International Women’s Day (IWD) Community states that March 8 is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women’s equality.
Noble and laudable sentiments, no doubt. Yet we must ask ourselves why women — who constitute about 49.58% of the world’s population, as of 2021, with a gender ratio of 101.68 men per 100 women — still require an occasion, an annual day of sorts, to commemorate their existence. The point is threefold. First, is gender so overlooked during life as usual that we only miraculously gain visibility during March 8 every year without end? Second, having celebrated womanhood in a suitably socially sanctified and commercially viable manner on this one day around the sun, what happens on the remaining 364 days? Third, if gender is invisibilised to the extent that a recognition of women’s fundamental rights is tantamount to a celebration, what good does a day, just a single day, do?
This, of course, is within the context that a celebration of IWD acknowledges and operates within the artificial dichotomy that is gender identity. A selective focus on people who self-identify as women impoverishes discourse and is an erasure, however well-intentioned, of nonbinary and gender non-conforming individuals. It is, after all, International Women’s Day, not International Womxn’s Day.
The UN, despite its virtue, is yet to embrace the alternative spelling ‘womxn’, which is meant to show inclusion of trans, nonbinary, womxn of colour, womxn with disabilities and all other marginalised genders.
Having assigned a day to a group of individuals defined in a reductive and problematic manner, we proceed to celebrate it through promotions and discounts on clothing, cosmetics, kitchenware, scooters and other assorted items that re-emphasise traditional gender roles in society. Hospitals and healthcare services often talk about breast cancer and uterine cancer awareness, offering obstetric and gynaecological check-ups, as though a womxn is a sum of her reproductive parts. Multimedia messaging promotes the need to respect our mothers, sisters, wives and daughters—again, a celebration of the traditional relational roles womxn are assigned within families. IWD, therefore, becomes less a celebration of gender and more a way to entrench gender roles even more rigidly.
The day becomes even murkier and much more nebulous around intersectional feminism — the largest intersection being that of age and gender. Older womxn (age 50 years and older, as per the WHO) are a large and diverse group who face specific contextual vulnerabilities across the ageing life course.
It is estimated that the number of womxn aged 60 and over will increase from about 336 million in 2000 to just over 1 billion in 2050. Womxn already outnumber men in older age groups and this imbalance increases with age. Worldwide, there are some 123 womxn for every 100 men aged 60 and over.
Further, it is increasingly recognised that health and well-being in later life is a longitudinal and not cross-sectional event. Health in older age is, to a large extent, a reflection of the living circumstances and actions of an individual during their lifespan.
Womxn, despite longer life expectancies at birth, carry a greater burden of non-communicable diseases (including depressive and anxiety disorders) as they age; spend more days ill, in pain or with a disability; are more likely to be dependent (physically, emotionally, financially, socially) on family members; and face greater barriers to accessing health or other social benefits.
Older womxn in research suffer from a double or even triple disparity — most scientific knowledge is obtained from studies on young to middle-aged white men but applied to older, brown women. None of this takes away from older womxn in most households continuing to be unpaid and unrecognised informal caregivers. Most older womxn have started their lives with the socioeconomic-cultural disparity that accumulates exponentially over the years while being expected to keep home and hearth running. One day a year does little to address this inequity. Worse, it serves to generate a sense of complacency. Having celebrated the older womxn for one day in a year, it becomes easier to look away the rest of the time.
In the Indian context, 82% of older men are currently married, as compared to 50% of older womxn — a proxy indicator for living arrangements and social security. Only 26% of older men do not have any personal income, as opposed to 60% of older womxn. About 70% of older men contribute to household expenditure, as compared to 36% of older womxn.
The social problems that womxn face at the intersection of age and gender require extensive policy work to identify, measure and mitigate the gap. This would include structural and legislative changes that are much more comprehensive than national programmes and policies that remain limited to documents and goodwill gestures alone. For one, it makes little to no sense to have a single Ministry of Women and Child Development undertake responsibility for what is over half the Indian population. For another, health and social welfare services cannot be delivered sustainably merely based on the social roles older womxn may be expected to fulfil in society.
Most media coverage of IWD is likely to restrict itself to a carefully curated set of interviews of empowered women. Much of this is an objectification, with undercurrents of forced positivity. None of this is enough. If we should act towards a better future for older womxn, we need to act now!
(dr.djan88@gmail.com)