When as elders we are empowered and less
dependent on sources outside ourselves, we are less at risk of being
abused. |
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- Another violence prevention strategy grew out of the
seamstress skills of some of the women at the Council. The Pocket Project
worked at devising alternatives to the handbag by altering garments to install
secret pockets and by making money belts.
All of the programs
and services offered by the Senior Citizens' Council arguably serve as violence
prevention strategies because we exist to fight ageism and to empower and
celebrate our community of Crones and our elders in general. When our elders
are empowered, and the resources, social structures and attitudes exist to
facilitate our independence and autonomy, then we are not dependent on sources
of power outside of ourselves and are, therefore, less at risk of being abused.
In short, violence prevention strategies are all related to the
importance of feeling our power-from-within, our "self-esteem". And, as Gloria
Steinem demonstrates in Revolution From Within, self esteem has been a
major force in motivating social change around the world and throughout history
(14). Is it any wonder that a potential (social and political) force for
(positive and constructive) social change as powerful as a strong community of
wise old women, is made to feel powerless, ugly, diseased and at risk? The
Crones at the Senior Citizens' Council are fighting back!
Cheryl Storey is Program Coordinator with the NDG
Senior Citizens' Council, 6870 Terrebonne, Montreal, Québec, H4B 1C5
(514) 487-1311.
- Mary Daly in Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical
Feminism. Beacon Press: Boston, 1978, p.350.
- Naomi Wolf in The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are
Used Against Women, Anchor Books: New York, 1992.
- Leah Cohen, Small Expectations: Society's Betrayal of
Older Women, McClelland and Stewart: Toronto, 1985, p.64.
- Chrone-logy refers to "an oral or written expression of
Chrone-logically understood connections between and among events normally
erased in patriarchal chronologies/herstories," cited in Mary Daly's,
Webster's First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language,
Beacon Press: Boston, 1987, p.116.
- Starhawk discusses a society structured around the
facilitation of "power-from-within" as opposed to based on exerting
"power-over" others in Truth or Dare: Encounters With Power, Authority,
Mystery, Harper and Row Publishers: San Francisco, 1987.
- Small Expectations, p.12.
- Gyn/Ecology, 1979, p.15.
- Barbara Macdonald with Cynthia Rich in Look Me In the Eye:
Old Women, Aging and Ageism, Spinsters Inc: San Francisco, 1983.
- Small Expectations, p.18. ).
- Kathleen McDonnel (ed.) Adverse Effects: Women and the
Pharmaceutical Industry, Women's Educational Press: Toronto, 1986.
- Adverse Effects, p.69.
- Barbara Ehrenreich and Deidre English For Her Own Good:
150 Years of Experts Advice to Women, Anchor Books: New York, 1989.
- Look Me In The Eye, p.85.
- Gloria Steinem, Revolution From Within: A Book Of
Self-Esteem, Little, Brown and Company: Boston, 1992.
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