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Challenges in Working with Older Women
In many of the early writings about abuse of seniors, authors
assumed that abuse was either very different from violence
against women in relationships or was the same thing, only
with older women. Since that time in the mid-1980's, we've
heard many more voices from older men and women and listened
more closely to what they have told us. However, the lines
between violence against women in relationships and abuse
of seniors is still sometimes murky. This article looks at
several situations of involving senior women that illustrates
some of that confusion.
Since January, 1997 I''ve been coordinating a secondstage
transition house for women who have been abused. In order
to get into our program, a woman has to have been in a first
stage house. We know that not many senior women get referred
or go to a first stage transition house, so it isn't surprising
that even fewer make it to second stage. However, some do.
Sometimes younger women come into our house bringing issues
relating to senior women. In the past two years, three senior
women have come to our program, and one woman in her thirties
came because of a senior woman. The following situations are
based on their stories. Nationalities and names have been
changed.
Wife Assault Grown Old
Sophie came into the house after staying for six weeks in
a first stage house in the lower mainland. She had been married
for 53 years, and had four grown children who lived in various
places in B.C. She had been married toward the end of World
War ll. Her husband, Jim, was stationed overseas. They had
married just before he left for Europe. Sophie and Jim had
both been born in Canada: Sophie in B.C. and Jim in Manitoba.
Sophie worked as a clerk/receptionist for the first three
years of marriage. After Jim got discharged from the service,
he started pressuring her to quit her job, even though he
didn't yet have work. As soon as he got a job in the mill,
she did quit. A year later their first child was born. Jim
attempted to control her every move from the first day he
returned from Europe, and after the children were born, he
was more and more able to do so. When verbal insults and demands
didn't work, he resorted to physical violence.
Sophie told us that she didn't have choices back then. As
soon as her eldest child was born, Jim knew he had total control
of her. She couldn't support herself and her child on what
she could earn. Her family tried to help but were afraid of
Jim and afraid of how divorce would look in the community.
So she stayed and worked to make the best of the marriage.
Family and friends told her things would get better when
the children were older, when money was easier, when Jim retired,
etc. After retirement, Jim not only got more controlling,
he started drinking more heavily than in the past. Her youngest
daughter started encouraging her to think about what she wanted,
gave her pamphlets on battering and abuse and phone numbers.
One day, Sophie decided she'd had enough, called a transition
house and walked out. Although Sophie had moments of self-doubt,
she knew she had made the right decision. She decided to leave
the rental apartment to Jim. After two months wait time, she
got a unit in a seniors' housing complex run by B.C. Housing.
The fact that she got priority placement due to the abuse
helped cut down on the wait time for housing.
Sophie's situation is wife assault grown old. She lived
through an abusive marriage during a time when there were
little or no resources for women to leave. Once she did leave,
there were several things that were important in helping her
live on her own. First, because she is asenior, Sophie had
access to a larger potential pool of housing than a younger
single woman. B.C. Housing offers priority placement to women
who have been abused. This means that they will get first
priority for any vacancies that become available. For women
under 65, there is one building in the whole lower mainland
that has accommodation for single women. In this case, being
a senior worked in Sophie's favour. Second, Sophie was able
to access all her senior benefits. She kept being amazed at
the amount of money she was going to have to live on. Jim
had always kept control of the money and had given her a very
meager allowance to run the home. Sophie figures that she
had become so good at stretching a dollar, that she will be
able to live comfortably and do some travelling.
On the other hand, Sophie found it very difficult to leave
her old community and her circle of friends in her neighborhood,
but decided that was what she wanted. Other older women find
this transition too disruptive. The challenge for us as workers
is to listen to the woman to make sure she is willing to make
the transition to a new living situation. If she isn't, the
challenge is bigger. We need to start working with the justice
system to encourage them to change their practices concerning
access to the family home. This may also involve working with
the medical system and the Public Trustee to ensure that older
women don't get trapped into an abusive relationship because
of the system's unresponsiveness. Another challenge is to
make sure that we don't fall into the ageist practices of
many people in our society and start deciding that we know
what is best for the older woman.
Abuse of Seniors or Intergenerational Conflict?
Mavis came into the program with her daughter, Andrea, and
her three children. Andrea had been in an abusive marriage
four years previously. Mavis had helped her leave and then
had lived with her so she could work and get back on her feet.
Andrea had met a man last year, wanted to marry him, and had
moved in with him. However, he didn't want Mavis living with
them. When Andrea tried to get him to change his mind, he
threw all of them out. Andrea now wanted her mother to get
her own place, so she could return to her partner. Mavis had
immigrated to Canada a number of years previously, and had
never learned English. After several months stay in the program,
Mavis was able to get into a seniors' complex, and Andrea
got an apartment in a subsidized housing unit. Although she
had decided not to marry, she didn't want her mother "interfering"
with future relationships.
In another case, Janet, who was in her early 30's and pregnant
with her first child, came into the program to get away from
her mother-in-law. She had married two years previously and
sponsored her husband from his country. soon after he arrived,
so did his mother. Janet said that her mother-in-law wanted
things to be just likethey were in her country, and couldn't
understand that marriages and families were different in Canada.
She also said that her mother-in-law wanted Janet to spend
all her time with her, and yet when she did, she got criticized
for not caring enough for her husband or for her mother-in-law.
Janet stayed in the program for four months. It took that
long for her to convince her husband that she was serious
about the two of them living alone. Her mother-in-law bought
a house and moved in with her other son.
These two situations illustrate what we are seeing and hearing
more often than wife assault grown old. Young women are asserting
their independence from family traditions and insisting on
living alone. For a senior woman, this can be devastating.
In Mavis' case, not only did she feel abandoned, she felt
used. She had supported her daughter when times were tough
for her, and now her daughter didn't want to return the support.
Janet was aware that her mother-in-law was feeling alone and
frightened in the new country, but didn't want to be the only
support for her. She had tried to get her mother-in-law involved
in some senior activities with others who spoke the same language
and her mother-in-law had refused.
Because we had two women from the same family, each needing
support, we found it helpful to:
- Make sure the mother has her own translator if English
is not her first language.
- Treat the mother and daughter as each needing support.
Have separate workers deal with each.
When working in a transition house that operates on the premise
of believing women, these situations are complex and challenging,
since they involve two women, each with conflicting needs,
who both need support. The work done by transition houses
since the early 1970s has been based on the premise that we
will be working with the family member - the wife - who has
been abused. Older women in conflict with their daughters
challenge our usual way of working, and may be challenging
our working understanding of abuse. Two questions they raise
for us are:
If abuse is the ongoing, systematic control of one person
by another, are these two situations abusive?
If what we're mandated, and paid, to work with is "violence
against women in relationships", do these women even qualify
for our help?
Services and transition houses answer these questions differently.
Some places work to "identify" the abusive woman in the situation
and only work with her. Other places choose not to work with
the situation at all, saying it falls outside their mandate.
At the moment we're choosing to believe and support both women.
We don't always agree with each other. For our second stage
shelter, this means the team has to be willing to be open,
flexible and willing to listen to each other and to the women.
We would certainly welcome other services and transition houses
engaging with us on grappling with these new, challenging
issues to find a way to serve all women who need us.
Connie Chapman
Health Canada, Health Promotion & Programs Branch
Ph: (604) 666-2414 Fx: (604) 666-8986
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