Advocacy

The Older Women's Network consumer orientation - asking older women themselves what they want - challenges the usual practice of professionals deciding what older women need. Using principles of peer education, training and support, older women encourage each other to become questioning consumers, to speak for themselves and to assert their different needs.

Over time members of OWN have defined eight consumer issues that are of primary importance to them as older women. The current list includes health, mental health, transport, housing, income security, social isolation, home care and attitudes towards older women.

In city and regional groups, women work in many different ways to initiate and maintain connections with local and state government, other non-government organisations and individuals, on these issues.

Taking on the role of an advocate on issues affecting older women means that we have had to develop a knowledge base and a source of information to enhance our advocacy efforts. Our database was designed to enable peer support links between older women with limited advocacy experience and older women who are already experienced advocates. The database contains information on issues of interest to older women, information on key people in other organisations who may be interested in a particular issue, and details abut contacting politicians.

The database project has been under way for over three years. We continue to add to and refine the material we keep. In the future, we plan to advertise the availability of material on the database for those interested in research projects on older women's issues.

For more information, please contact the OWN NSW Coordinator.

tel: 02 9247 7046
email: info@ownnsw.org.au

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