Good afternoon, everyone.
We thank the Status of Women committee for inviting us to present today in this dialogue about the impact of elder abuse on women with disabilities and deaf women in Canada. It is vital to give us meaningful ways to participate at policy tables in the decisions that affect our lives. We are grateful for this opportunity to open what we hope will be an ongoing dialogue.
As visitors to the lands of the Six Nations peoples, we thank the Haudenosaunee people for the use of their lands for us to come together today.
Today we are here to offer the expertise of our lived experience as the basis for input and collaboration to increase our opportunity for inclusive attitudes and practices for Canadian women with disabilities in their quest to be free from violence. The reality is that very little attention has been focused in Canada on the issue of abuse against older women in general, but there is an acute absence of this focus on women with disabilities and deaf women.
The federal government's Human Resources and Skills Development Canada statistics page on their elder abuse website, for example, states the importance of understanding elder abuse from a gendered perspective: “On the issue of abuse of older adults there are indications that not only age, but gender, and power and control dynamics are at play, so the entire complexity of causes and remedies needs to be considered”.
Further, it states:
Some studies indicate that spousal abuse is a significant dimension of abuse of older adults. Many scholars believe that abuse of older adults is a form of spousal abuse “grown old”. Some feminist scholars explain it as one of the consequences of family patriarchy, which is identified as one of the main sources of violence against women in society. Some scholars have questioned whether spousal abuse is ever first-time abuse in old age. The model views this power imbalance between men and women in our society as rendering women more vulnerable and open to abuse, whether they are young or old.
Not taken into account in both of these theories put forward for understanding elder abuse are disability, race, immigration status, first nations experience, etc. Most definitely, how people are valued and the amount of access they have to power in society impacts their vulnerability to abuse. All we can do at this point is talk about the devaluing of women, older women, and people with disabilities. Each layer of marginalization creates more barriers and an increased risk to abuse in our lives.
Since there is a pronounced absence of work focused on the issue of older women with disabilities and abuse, I can share with you today some of our thoughts about its prevalence and the needs for women with disabilities. Currently we are applying to Human Resources and Skills Development Canada's elder abuse call for proposals--the new horizons program--to address this absence in applied research and, thus, strategies to combat what we feel is a critical issue.
We know that people with disabilities, particularly people with intellectual disabilities, are experiencing an increased life expectancy beyond the typical mid-life. With this increasing aging population of people with disabilities comes a wide range of housing, legal, financial, caregiving, transportation, and community support and access issues, all of which have implications regarding the extent to which aging people with disabilities are safe and included in society.