Blueprint for Investing in Women Age 60+

Older women – particularly low-income older women of color and immigrant older women – represent a significant and growing segment of NYC’s population. They play vital roles in tens of thousands of families across some of the poorest communities of the city – managing housekeeping and child-minding duties so adult children can be put in grueling work hours, single-handedly raising some 100,000 grandchildren, and caring and providing for dependent relatives of all ages. Many are the pillars of faith and community organizations. Some still manage paid work. And most fill these multiple, critical functions while contending with a range of steep challenges – poverty, compromised health, ongoing losses of social networks, and inadequate care for their own needs.

 

The New York Women’s Foundation’s Blueprint for Investing in Women series comprises of four reports that explore the position, strengths, needs, and best strategies for promoting the economic security of NYC women, across the full span of their lifetimes. In line with NYWF’s core mission, the series particularly focuses on the situations of women whose opportunities for progress are limited by outside factors or attitudes related to initial economic position, race, immigration status, or sexual orientation/gender identity.

 

The goals of the series are to: (1) broaden understanding of the roles and issues of the city’s low-income girls and women; (2) stimulate broad, productive discussion of how best to both support those roles and address those issues; and (3) catalyze bold investment by all stakeholders

capable of expanding relevant opportunities and resources.