Tag: Old age and women

Could old age be, for women, the age of regained freedom? A moment when they finally allow themselves time—for their own interests, for leisure and for a social life. Detachment, experience and self-assurance seem to be the defining features of this stage of life, despite the persistent injunctions for women to remain forever young, slim and beautiful.

Directed by 28-year-old filmmaker Margaux Fournier, Au Bain des Dames has just won the award for Best Documentary Short Film at the César Awards 2026. The film shines a light on a group of Marseille women over the age of 70 who faithfully gather on their usual beach. It offers a free-spirited, compassionate and vibrant portrait of female ageing, one that runs counter to dominant representations.

Despite the stereotypes that surround women as they age in Egypt, especially after 60, in society, work, and the arts, many succeed in challenging this perception. Some women continue working, others shoulder the responsibility of raising children in difficult circumstances, while still others rediscover life after retirement, attempting to break the social constraints imposed on this stage of life.

Ageing has long been treated as a loss for women: loss of beauty, of desire, of relevance, of power. Medicine, culture, and media have reinforced this silence. But feminist thought has persistently resisted it, reframing menopause and later life as moments of transformation.

As the war rages in Gaza, motherhood is no longer a phase of life that ends, but one that may begin again, that may be forced upon a woman. Thousands of grandmothers have suddenly found themselves mothers to grandchildren who have lost their fathers and sometimes even their mothers.

Özgün Biçer is an academic at the Marmara University Faculty of Economics. Her research explores development, gender equality, and questions of diversity and inclusion, with a focus on women’s experiences in the workplace, the care economy, and the intersection of technology and gender. Working across academic and applied research within institutions and civil society, Biçer asks a central question: what can women’s everyday experiences tell us about the inequalities that structure our societies? She highlights how often-overlooked aspects of women’s everyday lives, from the digital divide and care work to body politics, aging, and menopause, reveal deeper structures of social inequality, themes she reflects on in this interview.

In early March 2026, several media outlets reported that the Algerian National People’s Assembly (APN) had examined a proposed law aimed at criminalizing the abandonment of elderly parents by their children. This policy demonstrates that the burden of aging falls primarily on the family, and especially on women.

Elderly Lebanese women continue to work with bodies worn down by age, in the absence of social protection and the erosion of health insurance and pensions. This article traces the stories of women over 70 who still struggle daily to live with dignity, revealing the specificity of women’s struggles when it comes to facing poverty in old age in Lebanon.

With her wrinkled face browned from the sun, her white hair and tired eyes, Umm Youssef watches the passersby in Bab Tuma Square in Damascus. Sometimes, she wanders away, but customers call her back and she rushes to make coffee in front of her car. Everything she needs is in that car, even the gas cylinder and material she needs to prepare hot drinks.

Perrine Kervran, who lent her voice to introduce a radio documentary series, mocks her own fear of menopause. In a hilarious litany, she lists the conflicting symptoms and injunctions that women experience as they approach menopause. Fatigue, memory loss, the doubt about wearing grey or dyed hair, being appealing or not anymore. The list is long...