Financial security, including concerns about Social Security and pension benefits. Access to affordable health care. Age discrimination in the workplace. End-of-life decisions. As we grow older and look ahead to retirement, these issues increasingly weigh on our minds.
But for a significant number of the 58 million American women age 40 and older, the addition of salary disparities, little or no income during the child-raising years and the resulting lowered pension benefits can make entry into later life even more fraught with trepidation.
OWL (the Older Women’s League), a not-for-profit grassroots organization, is dedicated to tackling these and other issues affecting midlife and older women through advocacy, education and influencing legislation and public policy. Founded in 1980, the Washington, D.C.-based organization boasts more than 15,000 members and 60 chapters nationwide, including several in the Chicago area.
Fighting ageism
According to Laurie Young, OWL’s national director, midlife and older women face an uphill battle in a society fixated on youth.
“Older women are often invisible in society,” she said. “This is an incredibly age-discriminatory culture. It says after a certain age women are not interesting, productive or useful anymore. Part of our mission is to fight ageism and to fight that invisibility. As long as we’re invisible it’s easy to ignore the kind of public policy decisions that can make life better for us.”
The organization publishes influential Mother’s Day Reports each year that are essentially white papers on a particular issue. OWL was directly responsible for limits on home health care being deleted from the new Medicare legislation, Young said. She also credits the organization with the passage of COBRA laws, which allow former employees to retain their health insurance coverage for 18 months after leaving a company.
On a local level, OWL chapters have made strides in educating policymakers about older women’s concerns.
Kennie James, treasurer of the group’s Hyde Park chapter, said Chicago Aldermen Toni Preckwinkle (4th) and Leslie Hairston (5th) have spoken at OWL events. She also said the chapter has close relationships with state Rep. Barbara Currie (D-Chicago) and state Sen. Barack Obama (D-Chicago). Area OWL members have met with one of U.S. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald’s aides regarding Social Security legislation. They also gained a new member in state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz (D-Chicago), who joined the northeast chapter after speaking at an OWL meeting.
`Inspirational’ approach
“One of the things that attracted me is that this is a group of very socially conscious women who are very up to speed on public policy issues, including health care and other issues affecting Medicare,” said Feigenholtz. “They were able to articulate very specific concerns and pinpoint issues. It was inspirational.”
While OWL on a national level works on a number of fronts, it is currently targeting the recent overhauling of Medicare and proposed changes in Social Security benefits as its top issues.
The organization says many new Medicare benefits–including the highly touted plan to cut the cost of prescription drugs–have too many loopholes to help most seniors.
In one of its recent “Action Alert” statements, OWL said the Medicare reforms would be disproportionately harmful to older women who, it said, account for 70 percent of the elderly poor. The organization cites statistics that say because women live longer than men and have more chronic health conditions, they are more dependent on Medicare as they grow older.
OWL also opposes President Bush’s 2001 proposal for what would essentially be the privatization of Social Security. The plan would take some of the money workers pay into the Social Security system and divert it into individually owned accounts; individuals would bear some risk for how their investments perform. The organization claims women in particular would be hurt by the plan, as Social Security benefits are the only income many women can count on in retirement. That’s especially true, OWL said, because many women accrued no retirement benefits during the years they devoted to raising children or taking care of older family members.
OWL’s Chicago chapters have presented programs on affordable health insurance, improving workplace skills, self-defense and estate planning. Sandra Silva, program chair of OWL’s northeast Chicago chapter, said the Chicago area chapters’ chief agenda is to spread the word about the organization.
“We try to educate people about older women’s issues,” she said. “We also try to get a positive image of OWL to the media. We don’t want to be invisible.”
Irene Nelson, president of the southeast Chicago chapter of OWL, which primarily consists of African-American women, said her group has been very involved in caregiving for older and ill women in her area as well as in voter registration.
Statistics cited by OWL indicate African-American women face many financial problems in their later years because they made less money than their white counterparts. Even after Social Security benefits are factored in, the poverty rate for African-American women older than 65 is nearly three times that of older white women, according to Social Security Administration figures. Naturally, that disparity creates numerous disadvantages as they age.
Many have no pensions
“Health costs are a major problem [for older African-American women],” she said. “A lot of us don’t have pensions because we had part-time jobs and our husbands didn’t make a lot of money.”
The chapters’ dialogue often continues after the monthly meetings end, said northeast chapter co-founder Sandy Parlin, who said some members continue the discussions at post-meeting lunches. Those lunches have also helped spread the word about OWL in unexpected ways.
“People have heard our after-meeting discussions and asked us for information about our meetings,” she said. “People are so open to it.”
But recruiting new members isn’t always easy. For some women in their 40s and 50s, the idea of joining an organization representing midlife and older women is met with fear and denial, said the organization’s Young.
“Very often when I’m talking with people about OWL I’ll talk about how great it is and ask if they’d consider being a member,” she said. “And they’ll say, `I’m not an older woman!'” They won’t acknowledge that this is their state in life and that they should be proud of it.”
Young said in the bigger picture, OWL’s concerns should be everyone’s concerns.
“While we focus on issues that affect midlife and older women, many of these issues are universal,” she said. “Good public policy for women is also good public policy for men.”
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For more information on OWL, call the national office at 800-825-3695 or visit its Web site at www.owl-national.org (the phone number as published has been corrected in this text).
