Overview

Violence against older women is a problem that has been insufficiently researched. Despite the progress made in the last few years, there is still a dearth of successful interventions, including best practices, for ensuring the safety of this population. While it is well known that violence has adverse consequences on both the physical and mental health of older women, most research and existing evidence focuses on women during their reproductive years (15-49). There is very little data on the types and patterns of violence against women over 50 years. The purpose of this report is to describe experiences of gender-based violence reported by older women (ages 65-74) in the region of Southeast and Eastern Europe. The study on which the report is based captures the most recent experiences of violence (within the past 12 months of the survey interview) against older women as well as their lifetime experiences with intimate partner and non-partner violence, both as adults and as children. Accumulated disadvantages including experiences of violence during a woman’s lifetime strongly influence overall health and wellbeing in older age, particularly when understood in the context of this stage in the life course. The age of 65 was selected as the start of old age for the purposes of this report because it is the legal age of retirement in the countries from which the study sample was drawn.