WE*ACT members have spoken up on a variety of issues over the past eight years, and our outspokenness stems from the organization’s focus on the economic insecurity of senior women. This common concern was determined by women who came together in the Income and Poverty Working Group, which was established at the 1999 Senior Summit in Vancouver. At that time, we were surprised to learn how much better off men were than women when it came to retirement income. During the summit, the women in this working group wrote the “Vancouver Declaration of Older Women’s Rights,” which was presented at the 2000 World March of Women Tribunal to give visibility to the concerns of older women.

Energized by our experiences at the tribunal and intrigued by the income discrepancies discovered at the summit, we formalized our existence as Women Elders in Action (WE*ACT). We continued to meet after the summit and, over the following years, attracted women to the organization who were likewise interested in understanding this persistent inequity.

As a fledgling group, WE*ACT studied Canada’s public pension system, which is the largest source of women’s retirement income. In the fall of 2001 we hosted a Women and Pensions Conference with feminist economist Monica Townson as the keynote speaker. Recommendations from the conference were distributed widely to gain provincial support for a pension lobby. This provincial support has been stabilized into a network of senior women who monitor all levels of government for policy developments.

In the intervening years, WE*ACT has utilized diverse outreach tools to raise awareness about the impact of public policy on senior women. Street theatre that highlighted the negative effect of cutbacks to provincial programs in 2002 and frequent outreach tours around BC have helped to disseminate information and increase our understanding of senior women’s shared experiences.

Research and discussion culminated in the 2005 publication of our position paper on pension reform, Pensions in Canada: Policy Reform Because Women Matter. This paper was and continues to be a tool for public outreach and education that reaches women in British Columbia and across the nation.

WE*ACT maintains a vital connection to our network through our member listserv and a monthly electronic bulletin. We are a clearing house for information to and from rural BC. We also encourage pension advocates across the country to circulate information regarding current pension policy developments.

Our members spread our research findings further afield by frequently presenting at conferences and gatherings focused on income security for women. We also organize electoral forums so that we can educate candidates about our concerns. A monthly, hour-long program on CJSF FM, which is broadcast from Simon Fraser University’s Burnaby campus, is another recently developed channel for our urban members to raise the profile of senior women and their issues.

Multi-year funding from Status of Women Canada and generous support from 411 Seniors Centre in downtown Vancouver has allowed WE*ACT to maintain a part-time staff member who has organized the volunteer contributions of approximately one hundred active members province-wide and helped members meet a range of objectives:

Underlying Challenges

Confusion about real poverty rates in Canada – Currently, there are three main tools used to measure rates of poverty in the country: the pre-tax low income cut-offs (LICOs), post-tax LICOs, and the market basket measure (MBM). These measures consistently produce huge discrepancies in poverty estimates. For example, depending on which of these measures was used to assess poverty among single senior women in Ontario in 2000, the estimates were 10%, 16%, and 38% (Mitchell, Shillington, and Mohamoud). The federal government has used all three measures at some point, but it is leaning toward the measure that shows the least number of poor.

Whether this is really an accurate measure depends upon one’s point of view. The fact that different factions of society use these different tools to support their own viewpoints means that there can be no real understanding of the numbers of single senior women living in poverty in this country.

The lack of reliable numbers to support our arguments has been a challenge, which is partially why we’ve compiled research that describes women’s earnings, time spent in the workforce, ability to save, and access to pensions. This research gives us a handle on whether senior women could conceivably save enough for retirement, which they are expected to do.

Ageism exists – This is particularly true for women because there is a double standard when it comes to aging. In fact, ageism exists in our own networks and neighbourhoods. This may come as no surprise in a society that is as youth-oriented as ours is today. While the swell of boomers moving toward retirement will tilt the population balance firmly on the side of elders, at this time, the needs of seniors are considered to be of real interest only to those who benefit in some way from servicing them. Or those, mostly female, unpaid caregivers who fill the gaps that exist in public policy.

Through our discussions with women from a variety of backgrounds, we are hearing that even elders that hail from cultures that traditionally revered the elderly are losing status as immigrant groups become entrenched in Canadian society. People tend to fear, rather than appreciate or welcome, the inevitability of aging. Thus, it is difficult to get an adequate review of seniors’ issues from the younger generation. Even the feminist movement appears to be slow to embrace the concerns of their older members.

Affluent seniors are highly visible – There are many affluent seniors in the country as the gap between the wealthy and the poor widens. Part of this gap is exacerbated by the fact that educated people with higher earning potential are attracted to one another and have formed family units with substantial dual-income streams, both before and after retirement. The media and marketers seeking to tap into this group’s potential create advertisements pitched at those with substantial incomes. Thus, these well-heeled individuals tend to dominate the media’s portrayal of people of retirement age. If one’s sole source of information about seniors' well-being is the mainstream media, one would imagine most of them to be quite well off, as seniors are portrayed playing golf, looking for recreational properties or second homes abroad, and taking vacations.

In truth, there are many affluent seniors in this country. Many began their working lives soon after the Second World War ended and the country entered a time of high industrialism. They enjoyed job security and rising real wages over most of their lives. Thanks to the labour movement, many ended their working careers with generous pensions and the ability to accumulate substantial savings and other resources. Most of these individuals, and there are no surprises here, were male.

Most women married young, and few worked outside of the home. Their job was to raise the children and look after the home and its inhabitants, while the male breadwinner worked to support the family financially, usually with just one job. This set-up came to be called the nuclear family, and it was the most prevalent way of life when our present pension system was established. (Obviously, women are disadvantaged within this system, which is is based on lifetime earnings.)

The nuclear family is not the ‘norm’ today. Things started to change in the 1970s, and they have continued to change since then. Because these changes included the privatization of services and programs, our present pension system no longer fits present realities, particularly the experiences of approximately 40% of single senior women. These are the people that WE*ACT has advocated for over the last several years, these women plus immigrant and Aboriginal women. They are the ones most in need of pension reform.

Our recent research findings, compiled under the title Myths About Canadian Women and Pensions, describe why conditions won’t necessarily be better for many younger women when they leave the workforce. We have been speaking out for them, and to them, as well.