Document 46: "Plank 19: Older Women," from National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, The Spirit of Houston: The First National Women's Conference (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), pp. 79-80.
Clara Mortenson Beyer (1892-1990). A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, where she also received an M.A. in economics specializing in labor issues, in 1919 Clara Beyer became Secretary of the Washington, D. C. Minimum Wage Commission, which pioneered in minimum wage legislation for women. In the early 20s she served as executive secretary of the New York Consumers' League, where she worked with Frances Perkins and Molly Dewson on labor legislation for women. In 1920 she married Otto Beyer, later giving birth to three sons. After Franklin Delano Roosevelt's election as president in 1932, she helped organize the campaign to appoint Frances Perkins as Secretary of Labor, who became the first woman to serve in a cabinet capacity. Beyer left a deep imprint on the enforcement of American labor legislation by serving as Associate Director of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Standards from its founding in 1934 until 1958. She then joined the forerunner of the Agency for International Development and in 1973 co-authored the Percy Amendment to the International Cooperation Assistance Act, which required specific proportions of U.S. foreign aid to go to programs serving women. From The Spirit of Houston: The First National Women's Conference, p. 78.
p. 79
PLANK 19
OLDER WOMEN
The Federal and State governments, public and private women's organizations, and social welfare groups should support efforts to provide social and health services that will enable the older woman to live with dignity and security. These services should include but not be limited to:
Innovative housing which creates as nearly as possible an environment that affords security and comfort.
Home health and social services, including visiting nurse services, homemaker services, meals-on-wheels, and other protective services, that will offer older women alternatives to institutional care, keeping them in familiar surroundings as long as possible.
Preventive as well as remedial health care services.
Public transportation in both urban and rural areas for otherwise housebound women.
Continuing education in order to insure that the older woman will be an informed and intelligent user of the power which will be hers by virtue of the increase of her numbers.
Immediate inclusion of geriatric education in the curriculum and training of all medical personnel in order that the elderly will receive optimum medical attention. This applies particularly to nursing home staff.
Bilingual and bicultural programs, including health services, recreation, and other programs, to support elderly women of limited English-speaking ability.
Elimination of present inequities in social security benefits.
Recognition of the economic value of homemaking in social security benefits.
Passage of the Displaced Homemakers bill.
Expansion of coverage for medical and health care costs.
Inclusion of older women as active participants in all kinds of policymaking positions at every level of government.
The image of the older women is changing, and there should be wide publicity focused on this. The effective use of the media is essential to furnishing information to the older woman so as to insure her informed participation in the decisionmaking process which continuously affects the quality of her life and the life of her community.
Mandatory retirement should be phased out.
Background:
"Most older persons need only a little help—assistance in personal shopping or someone to prepare an occasional hot meal—and these small needs are sometimes the hardest to meet."
Poverty, isolation, and inadequate medical care deprive many older women of a productive and secure old age. The number of people facing this deprivation is increasing. More Americans live longer, and women outlive men by a widening margin. A women's life expectancy is 76 years compared to 68 for men. On average, women live eight years longer than men.
Living alone in poverty After a lifetime of caring for men and children, women are left the poorest of the elderly, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. In 1976 women over 65 had the lowest median income of any age or sex group: $2,800, about half the income of men their age. Black women are poorer than the average—nearly half the black women over 65 were living below the poverty level.
Most women outlive their spouses. On average, a woman can expect to live the last 11 years of her live as a widow, (most men are married when they die)—and she will be worse off financially than when her husband was alive. The stereotype of the "rich widow" is a myth that occurs more often in operettas and fiction than in real life.
Women mentioned loneliness twice as often as men when a 1976 Harris poll asked about the worst aspects of growing older. Wherever they live, in cities or country, elderly women depend on public transportation. When it doesn't exist, or is too expensive, they are isolated in their homes. Most women over 65 do not have regular access to a car, reports the Bureau of the Census.
Older women living alone in big cities are often afraid to go out of their homes. According to a University of California study, one-third of the females robbed on our city streets are women over 65. They are six times as likely to become victims of crime as the rest of the population. Four out of five of these crimes against elderly women occur near their homes, frequently because it is known that they receive retirement checks in the mail.
Housing designed for the lifestyle and incomes of older people would permit them to live together in a more secure and supportive environment where needed services would be readily available.
Home care services Because women are more likely to live to an older age when disability is frequent, nearly three-fourths of the elderly living in institutions are women. According to Representative Claude Pepper of Florida, chair of the House Select Committee on Aging, 40 percent of the elderly who enter nursing homes are not sick; they simply cannot feed themselves adequately.
In a plea for a national policy toward the aged that will keep them
p. 80
Nearly a fourth of the elderly now living in nursing homes could live on their own with proper services, estimate the National Retired Teachers Association and the American Association of Retired Persons, but nursing, home health care, home-making, meals-on-wheels, transportation, escort, recreation, legal, and counseling services are available only sporadically. A few programs are funded through the Older Americans Acts and Title 20 of the Social Security Act, but these funds do not begin to meet the need. Less than one percent of Medicare funds was spent for home health services in 1975.
Medicare inadequacies Medicare insurance for the elderly costs them more and covers less of their medical costs than it did when the system was enacted in 1965. Inflation and the rising number of eligible participants have reduced the benefits available. In fiscal 1976, for instance, Medicare covered only 43 percent of the total health care costs of the elderly.
Though Medicare provides hospital insurance, it does not automatically take care of doctor's bills. That option must be chosen and paid for. People with low incomes are technically eligible for Medicaid, but to receive such total care the patient often has to be institutionalized.
Medicare offers no coverage at all for many of the services older people must have: annual health examinations; eyeglasses, required by more than 90 percent of the elderly; dental care, which half have neglected for five years; hearing aids, used by a fifth of the elderly and needed by half; prescription drugs, on which the elderly spend an average of $100 per year.
Productive years Concern for their health needs sometimes obscures the fact that a majority of older people want to and can be productive contributing citizens. An American Medical Association survey found that 82 percent of people over 65 have no limitations on their mobility. The Gray Panthers, an activist group advocating better conditions for the elderly, has campaigned against media stereotyping which portrays them as "stubborn, rigid, inflexible, forgetful, and confused." Mobilized by their organizations, however, older people can be a potent political force, reported The New York Times in an article on October 10, 1977. Their basic demands are to remain as independent as possible and to have a voice in making decisions that affect them.
Mandatory retirement Many older people want to work as long as they are able. Eight percent of women over 65 are gainfully employed, and according to a recent Harris poll, 30 percent would like to work.
Unfortunately, an elderly man is more acceptable to employers. In the preretirement decade, ages 55 to 64, unemployment is more than double for women; after 65, the disparity increases.
Some are forced from their jobs by mandatory retirement rules in government, business, and educational institutions. For several years a number of organizations have joined the elderly in lobbying for a change in these rules that are thought to affect about 41 percent of the 21 million workers who are covered by pension plans.
A Congressional Committee on the Aging heard testimony that compared older workers favorably with younger colleagues in dependability, judgment, work quality and volume, human relations, and absenteeism and noted that older workers have fewer on-the-job accidents.
"Chronological age alone is a poor indicator of ability to perform a job," concluded the report of the House Committee on Education and Labor. By October 1977 both the Senate and the House had passed a bill adding five years to the statutory ban on age-based discrimination in the workplace, including involuntary retirement. When and if the bill becomes law, it will postpone for five years the age at which most Americans (with the exception of some teachers and highly paid executives) can be retired against their will.
Many older people who are not working have gone back to school. They are a growing number on every educational campus, and many more would be attending classes if they could afford tuition and had transportation available to them.
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