1 hour ago
3
Gender discrimination begins early and accumulates over time, leading to a narrowing of job opportunities and loss of belonging as they get older. Credit: ShutterstockTORONTO / LONDON, September 17 (IPS) - Chung Sun-cha started collecting cardboard, plastic, and other recycling materials off the streets of Incheon, South Korea, to sell when she was in her mid-70s. She is now 87. Without an adequate pension, Chung worked six days a week, sometimes seven, in the wind, rain, and snow until she fell and broke her arm while working in 2025. “I couldn’t find any other work because of my age,” she said.
Chung Sun-cha is not alone. In 2024-2025, Human Rights Watch interviewed 41 women ages 28 to 87 in researching working conditions for women in South Korea. They described how their career opportunities narrowed drastically from their 40s onward to a handful of low-paid, precarious jobs that often caused physical and mental harm, and eroded their sense of belonging.
Work by Belonging Forum in the UK indicates that this loss of belonging in older age is not confined to South Korea. Data from the Belonging Forum’s UK-wide 2026 Belonging Barometer reveals that nearly 19 percent of people ages 65 and older reported that they “not really” or “not at all” feel they belong. Furthermore, 16 percent of respondents 65 and older said they felt lonely “often or some of the time.”
October 1 marks the annual International Day of Older Persons. The United Nations theme for 2026 is “Rethinking Longevity.” Longer lives may bring increased opportunities, including in employment, but for many women, gender discrimination begins early and accumulates over time, leading to a narrowing of job opportunities and loss of belonging as they get older.
Governments have a vital opportunity when they meet in October at the United Nations in Geneva to continue work on a new international treaty on the rights of older people. The proposed treaty should not merely add age-specific language to existing rights; it should fundamentally reimagine how we value older age.
In South Korea, Jung Kyong-sook, 55, worked as a bookkeeper before stopping work in 1994 to raise her three children. When she re-entered the workforce in 2013, the door was largely shut: “Most of us [women] in our 50s go to work in supermarkets as a cashier or cook in schools. We can’t really pursue our career.”
These outcomes stem from systemic gender and age discrimination that restrict women’s economic opportunities and reduce their sense of belonging and value in society. These entrenched, negative attitudes, known as “gendered ageism,” coupled with discriminatory employment policies and practices, lock women out of the broader workforce as they age, and isolate them in narrow and undervalued roles.
Even the government reflects these prejudices. Jobs the Ministry of Employment and Labor promotes for women in their 30s to 50s on Work24, its online hiring platform, revolve predominantly around beauty, caregiving, and education. The platform funnels women ages 50 or over into low-paid care work, cleaning, kitchen assistance, cooking, and social service jobs, reflecting societal expectations.
For many older women, work is necessary for survival, not a matter of choice. In 2025, women in their late 50s in South Korea faced a 50 percent gender pay gap. Women eligible for the National Old Age Pension faced an average gender pension gap of 47 percent. The average monthly pension for women was just KRW367,000 (£200), 18 percent of the national minimum wage.
Yet work offers something beyond economic survival. Work also gives many of the older women we interviewed a sense of purpose, agency, and belonging. This sense of purpose is a key determinant of the internationally protected right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. Being systematically segregated into ever-narrowing workplaces simply for being a woman considered “too old” – undermines this sense of belonging.
Research from the Belonging Forum shows that belonging does not happen by accident. It is built or broken by the systems, services, and environments that surround people throughout their lives. It depends on access to economic and social structures that determine whether older people have the time, resources, support, and security to participate in family and community life on an equal footing.
Older people can experience an erosion of dignity when society fails to recognize their equal rights and inherent value, operating under the ageist assumption that older age is a period of inevitable decline rather than continued development. The UK Belonging Barometer found that approximately 51 percent of respondents 65 and older “rarely/never” feel that they are working together with others for mutual benefit – pointing to the risk of social marginalization and exclusion in older age.
By embedding dignity, inclusion, equality, economic security, and belonging in the international treaty, we can ensure that women like Chung Sun-cha and Jung Kyong-sook are no longer treated as invisible low-wage workers, but instead as active and valued rights holders thriving in older age, in line with spirit of the International Day of Older Persons.
Kim Samuel is founder and chief architect at the Belonging Forum. Bridget Sleap is senior researcher on the rights of older people at Human Rights Watch.
© Inter Press Service (20260917085751) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service
