International Longevity Centre Global Alliance - Designing the Future of Ageing

Summary

Purpose of the Committee

Older women today make up an increasing share of the world’s ageing population, reflecting both gains in life expectancy and entrenched gender inequalities across the life course. While women live longer than men, longevity is often accompanied by poorer health, chronic illness, or disability, and by continued responsibility for unpaid caregiving well into their later life. The lifelong disadvantage experienced by women through lower wages, fragmented employment histories, limited pension entitlements, and heavier caregiving burdens accumulate into heightened insecurity in later years. Consequently, older women are more likely than men to experience poverty, widowhood, and social isolation, often with little or no access to savings or social protection. Despite these realities, their extensive contributions as caregivers, community organisers, and informal workers remain undervalued and largely invisible in labour statistics or national development frameworks. At the intersection of sexism and ageism, older women face compounded discrimination that limits their access to healthcare, housing, decent and meaningful work, and decision-making spaces.

Although global agendas such as the Sustainable Development Goals commitment to “leave no one behind,” policy discourse continues to privilege youth and working-age groups. Even gender equality strategies rarely extend beyond reproductive age, reinforcing older women’s invisibility in advocacy, research, and funding priorities. This neglect is not only unjust but also counterproductive: investing in older women through universal social pensions, gender-sensitive health care, stronger protection against age- and gender-based violence, and secure land and inheritance rights is critical to closing the “gender pension gap” and ensuring dignity in later life. Recognising older women as rights-holders and contributors rather than passive dependents is essential to building inclusive and resilient societies. In rapidly ageing regions such as Asia and Africa, failure to address their needs will exacerbate intergenerational poverty, health system pressures, and gender inequality. Conversely, acknowledging and supporting their roles in families, communities, environmental movement and economies strengthens social cohesion and sustainable development. The cumulative disadvantages faced by older women must be addressed not as marginal issues but as central to achieving gender equality and social justice across the life course.

Within this context, the Gender and Ageing Committee of the International Longevity Centre Global Alliance (ILC-GA)’s purpose is to amplify the voices and lived experiences of older women, a group too often marginalised at the intersection of gender and age. The Committee seeks to confront systemic disadvantages such as inadequate pension coverage, health inequities, economic insecurity, and the burden of unpaid care, while at the same time highlighting older women’s indispensable roles as cultural bearers, caregivers, and active community participants. By bridging research and advocacy, the Committee uses the evidence to illuminate overlooked realities and ensures these insights translate into concrete reforms in health, housing, care, and social protection systems. Placing older women at the centre of policy dialogue, programme design, and advocacy, the Committee strengthens ILC-GA’s commitment to dignity, equality, and justice, positioning older women not as passive recipients of support but as central actors in shaping inclusive and sustainable development pathways.

Activities

• Developed agenda on gender and ageing and a strategic framework to guide policy advocacy in this area.
• Strengthened capacity and deepened knowledge on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), with a focus on using the mechanism to produce effective shadow reports.
• Submitted an abstract for presentation at the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics (IAGG) 2026 Symposium.

Reports / updates

Engagements / Get Involved

• Training sessions organized by ILC-S, Tsao Foundation with IWRAW Asia Pacific (International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific) and ALAP (Alliance on Longevity Asia Pacific) provided the catalyst for Women and Ageing Committee members to be introduced to both networks. This collaboration continues.
• Discussion led by Ms. Susana Harding, Sr Director -ILC-S and chair of Chair- Gender and Ageing Committee – ILC-GA, with an advisor from HelpAge International and regional Alliance on critical issues affecting older women.

Structure / members

Contact

If you are interested in discussing the work of the International Committee, please get in touch with the committee chair, Ms Susana Concordo Harding at susanaharding@tsaofoundation.org.