Similarly ignoring the needs of older women is Transitions, an Ontario government program which offers a grant of up to $5,000 over a two-year period for employment training for older workers who have been laid off due to plant closures. This program does not take into account many older women's need for income while they are training for a new job.

The reality of many older women's lives is poverty. Often older married women are financially abandoned by spousal death, divorce or desertion. At least one third of Canadian women over the age of 55 lives in poverty. Recently, a non-profit organization in Toronto wich counsels newly single women, reported that almost half of its clients were women over fifty years of age. Many of these older women are living in extreme poverty. In the last year, the number of their clients with incomes of less that $12,000 a year has doubled due to the increasing number of older women entering its doors.

Meanwhile, the workforce is closing its doors. Older women, we are told time and again, should not get paid employment because we take jobs away from younger people who have the right to work. This is, of course, a myth. Evidence gathered by the United States Department of Labor shows that young people do not fill vacancies left by retiring workers. But, according to studies by Canada Employment and Immigration, older women have learned their lessons well. They are giving up job searches before younger workers, often because they are concerned about taking jobs away from younger people.

Often the only kind of paid employment an older woman can find, when she can find it, is part-time. According to a 1989 report by the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto, over 40% of new jobs created from 1983 to 1986 were part-time. Service sector jobs were mostly part-time and mostly held by women (70%). Highly educated women have reported the exploitation of their expertise and experience by some employers who have figured out that they can underpay and under-employ older women, because no one else will hire them.

But older women are still very much in demand...as care-givers. We are expected to give our time freely, and for free. When we were young women many of us stayed in the home, without pay, caring for our spouses and children. If we were single, perhaps we cared for a physically or mentally disabled sibling And /or aging parents.

Today, as aging adults ourselves, we must meet our own needs, sandwiched between the needs of our growing children, their children and the additional needs of our parents. A woman of the "sandwich generation" needs flexible working hours, but she is the only one who seems to realize this. How can she keep from thinking that her struggles are somehow her own fault? All along she has been led to believe that her responsibilities will disappear as she grows old; that she should slow down to enjoy her "twilight years"?

This is not the truth about our lives. In order to begin to have our needs acknowledged, we must tell each other how it really is with us.

Some strategies
Many older women who refuse to be marginalized as "little old ladies" have found sharing thoughts and feelings with other women to be the first step towards a positive self image. Reaching out is perhaps the most difficult part because the hurt, the bewilderment, and the frustration which brings us to the point of speaking out can make us feel like we're the only one. What a surprise and relief it is to discover that the woman with whom we have decided to share our concerns smiles knowingly and says, "yes, I know what it's like, I've been there."