When as elders we are empowered and less dependent on sources outside ourselves, we are less at risk of being abused.

  1. 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.

  1. Mary Daly in Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Beacon Press: Boston, 1978, p.350.
  2. Naomi Wolf in The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, Anchor Books: New York, 1992.
  3. Leah Cohen, Small Expectations: Society's Betrayal of Older Women, McClelland and Stewart: Toronto, 1985, p.64.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. Small Expectations, p.12.
  7. Gyn/Ecology, 1979, p.15.
  8. Barbara Macdonald with Cynthia Rich in Look Me In the Eye: Old Women, Aging and Ageism, Spinsters Inc: San Francisco, 1983.
  9. Small Expectations, p.18. ).
  10. Kathleen McDonnel (ed.) Adverse Effects: Women and the Pharmaceutical Industry, Women's Educational Press: Toronto, 1986.
  11. Adverse Effects, p.69.
  12. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deidre English For Her Own Good: 150 Years of Experts Advice to Women, Anchor Books: New York, 1989.
  13. Look Me In The Eye, p.85.
  14. Gloria Steinem, Revolution From Within: A Book Of Self-Esteem, Little, Brown and Company: Boston, 1992.


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