Sombra para ganado y pasto

Heléna Herklots is Chief Executive of Carers UK. Helena joined Carers UK in February 2012, after working with and for older people for over 25 years, most recently as Services Director at Age UK. Helena co-chairs the Department of Health’s Care and Support Transformation Group and represents Carers UK at the Carers Strategy Cross Government Board.

about the impact of caring. 42% of older women said that they retired early to care; 53% expected their financial situation to get worse over the next year; and 78% thought that their health was worse due to the effect of caring. The experience of Margaret will be familiar to many older women who care for loved ones. Margaret retired early from her teaching career to care for her husband John who has Alzheimer’s disease. She cared for 10 years without support and only when she reached crisis point did she start to receive limited support and breaks from caring. The pressure of caring around the clock took its toll on both her physical and mental health but she was resolute that the best place for her husband was at home. Her health reached breaking point last year and John had to move into a care home, but it could not provide the care John needed because of his sometimes violent outbursts. Margaret made the difficult decision to bring her husband back home to continue to care for him herself.

The practical demands of caring can be immense, and too often carers struggle on with little support, risking their own health as a result. But it is not just the practical demands, it is the emotional too. Becoming a carer can turn your life upside down; it changes the relationship you have with your loved one who you are caring for; it can change the relationships you have with your friends; and how you are seen by wider society, and how you regard yourself. As an older woman carer you can experience a growing invisibility from the disregard of casual ageism, compounded by the restrictions placed on you by your caring role. The contribution that you make as a carer is too often ignored, or taken for granted, or even exploited. Older women carers play a powerful role in our society in caring for others, often across the generations for grandchildren, partners, and sometimes parents; yet it is a role with very little power for the individual. This needs to change. The change needs to happen before women reach older age, with better support so that it is easier to combine work and caring. Without this support women are forced to leave work, or reduce their hours, with consequences for their own incomes and pensions, as well as a wider economic cost. Overall the cost of carers having to give up work is estimated at £5.3 billion1 _{a year}

to the economy in lost earnings and tax revenues and additional benefit payments.

The support needs to be a mix of available and affordable care, together with employers supporting carers in their workforce through flexible working arrangements. This needs to be recognised as a crucial investment in supporting people to care, and to continue to work, rather than being seen as a drain on the Exchequer. At the same time affordable care and support needs to be available to older carers who have retired from employment, to help them in their caring role as they grow older.

The other shift we need to see is, if anything, more challenging, as it is a cultural one, and we all have a part to play. If being an older woman means you may experience the ‘double jeopardy’ of ageism and sexism, then being an older woman carer can be a ‘triple jeopardy’ where the impacts of caring can further restrict your quality of life, and opportunities to live the life you want. One older woman carer described her caring situation to me as ‘being in lock down’ – not so very different from Mary Webster’s ‘house arrest’.

Many older women carers grew up during a time when women’s contribution to society was far less recognised than it is today. They now live in a society which too often ignores their contribution as older women carers. We need to challenge this; guard against any prejudices and assumptions we may ourselves have; and work to ensure that older women carers are recognised, respected, and valued – no longer invisible and ignored.

In recognition of International Women’s Day, this short essay discusses affective injustices, which are defined as inequality in doing work that goes into providing love and care for another individual1_{. While it is important to recognise that political and}

economic injustices in old age are of profound importance, the impact of affective injustices on the emotional wellbeing of older women needs to be highlighted. Love and caring have been traditionally viewed as within the domain of women’s work and hence have been treated as a private matter2_{. Although unpaid}

care work has been recognised by feminists as a major injustice3 4_{, older women’s experiences of affective inequalities have not}

received adequate attention in the mainstream gerontological or feminist literature. Nor has women’s emotional response to this affective inequality been sufficiently recognised.

Globally, populations are ageing and in Western countries life expectancy at the age of 75 years is increasing, whilst the population aged 80 years and over is also growing. In old age, women are twice as likely as men to provide unpaid care. Carers may also have underlying medical conditions or disabilities and are usually not in receipt of any carer’s allowance or benefit5_.

Given that most carers are women and the majority are aged over 50 years, this has implications for their affective well-being. In most cultures, women remain subordinate to men in terms of power, income, wealth and influence. Regardless of a woman’s age, class, or participation in paid work, women are surrounded by structural and cultural signals that define their lives. These signals refer not only to their position in the economic, political, religious and domestic arena, but also assume that women are the de facto informal and unpaid care providers.

Affective inequalities: older women’s