Thank you.
Good morning. Thank you for the invitation to speak on the challenges faced by senior women with a focus on the factors contributing to their poverty and vulnerability.
This topic aligns with Women Focus Canada's mandates in addressing and supporting women in areas including, but not limited to, the physical, mental and psychological well-being of women.
For this purpose today, I will be addressing the following challenges: isolation, health services, housing and transportation, and I will be providing some recommendations.
Most would agree with me that a first step in reducing health inequalities among senior women is reducing the socio-economic disparities with a focus on gender. Many senior women remain highly self-sufficient. However, the process of aging may come with some challenges, including, but not limited to, the loss of independence, financial difficulties and/or sometimes diminished physical mobility.
As we look at the isolation faced by senior women, we know that more and more women are facing the realities of aging alone, as women generally outlive men. Almost half of the women over 75 live alone because they have no spouse or friends who are still living. In Canada, by the year 2036 the average life expectancy for women will rise to 86.2 from the current 84.2 years. For men, it will rise from the current 80 to 82.9 years.
Isolation is very common among senior women for many reasons, especially for those women who live in rural areas. Poverty is important to talk about when it comes to senior women for many reasons. As the Canadian population continues to age, social isolation is a key challenge that will affect the well-being of many senior women. It increases the exposure to multiple health risks. Sometimes senior women become isolated as a result of physical health conditions such as chronic pain. Sometimes the isolation may be due to mental health conditions, such as depression. Low-income people and senior women are among the most vulnerable to social isolation.
What can we do as government? Here are a few recommendations.
We need practical, socially innovative approaches. We need to involve senior women in all the steps from the planning phase to the implementation and evaluation of those programs to have a greater chance of being successful in addressing social isolation. We know that senior women are the ones who can speak to the needs, the issues they are facing. It's not us or any other organization making decisions for them without their inputs.
We need to ensure that senior women who are living alone get some form of exercise or outdoor activity with programs in the community that are geared to ensuring that women are not isolated, sitting in their rooms alone.
There is a need to mobilize community resources that target groups of individuals who share common characteristics. Many times older women are isolated even among other senior women. We need to develop ways to monitor and evaluate programs in community centres. There are so many programs in our community centres. They are nowhere evaluated.
I'm going to talk a bit now about health services challenges faced by senior women in Canada. Those include, but are not limited to, limited funding for non-insured health programs and the limited benefits coverage of the health care system, which may result in seniors having to pay for some medically related health services and dental services. There is a proven link between poor dental health and heart disease, and government needs to address that, even among senior women.
Here are a few recommendations. We need equal access to health services and medications for all senior women, and we also need to ensure that the medications are taken as prescribed by doctors. We need to come up with strategies to support senior women and address the medication that they are taking.
Funding for a range of therapies, including physiotherapy and occupational therapy, should be considered. Effective and efficient community health care services should also be considered, with comprehensive, mandatory, gender-sensitive courses on senior women's issues, especially in health care areas.
Some housing challenges faced by women—