General Recommendation No. 27 on older women

CEDAW Recommendation No. 27 links older women’s care labor and income to institutions shaping gender inequality across a lifetime. Low pay, interrupted employment and unequal property rights do not disappear when women grow older. CEDAW General Recommendation No. 27 places older women’s rights within inequalities accumulated across life. Formally distributed on December 16, 2010, it does not reduce aging to one universally applicable age threshold.

A pension reflects an earlier division of labor

Inadequate retirement income cannot be explained only at retirement. Lower wages, informal employment and contribution gaps caused by unpaid care can continue to shape protection in old age. A system recognizing only continuous paid work may erase the contribution of maintaining a household.

The document also addresses widowhood, inheritance, health services and violence. A husband’s death can threaten control over housing and land; dependence on relatives does not make family life automatically safe. Treating these circumstances as age alone obscures property, marriage and gender norms.

A person receiving care may also provide it

Older women often continue caring for grandchildren, partners and relatives. Depicting them only as burdens or benefit recipients hides work sustaining households and communities. Policy must address not only how others care for them, but their ability to share, refuse or renegotiate caring responsibilities.

The recommendation does not establish that older women have identical lives. Place, poverty, disability and family relations change needs; protection cannot replace a person’s voice. Its obligations and policy directions are not evidence of implementation everywhere.

The French report on the gender pension gap supplies a specific institutional comparison for the life-course account. Care Work explores overlapping roles as caregiver and care recipient through disability justice and mutual aid. Both help turn “older people need help” into questions about income, rest, resources and authority over one’s own life.