Gender-based research focused on helping senior women leave abusive relationships

A UPEI professor is part of a two-day conference next week aimedat better targeting services to help older women leave abusive partnerships.

Prof. Colleen MacQuarrie says she and hercolleagues on the Abuse and Neglect of Older Adults Research Team noticedelder abuse is different for women andmen with intimate partner violence the leading challenge for women.

Shesaid available literature on elder abuse didn't look at how gender, or age affects the problem.

"It wasn't looking at women's experiences or older women's experiences with elder abuse," she said.

"It looked to us like older women were falling through the cracks."

Better services

The research team will be part of a two-day conference that will focus on how totarget services to help older women leave abusive relationships.

MacQuarrie saidolder women's experiences differdepending on their ethnicity, earning ability and where they live.

"When we look at a gender lens around abuse, we stop seeing older women as having particular needs that are different from older men."

MacQuarriesaid in some cases, the older woman may be dealing with a longstanding issue of violence that she needs help with.

Economic issues

"Even the issue of economic security, economic justice that gets complicated for women in relationships where perhaps... there isn't enough to live on with old-age security."

MacQuarriesaid it's even worse for women who have worked but may not have paid into theCanada Pension Plan.

"Or if they were farm women and worked on farms they don't have the same economic resources as women who might have worked in other ways."

Women who worked on farms could not pay into CPP for a number of years andMacQuarriesays for the women who are aging now and needthose supports, they aren't there.

"You may stay longer as you try to find a way out."

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