Women make up the majority of the world’s older population. Among those aged 80 and over, nearly two-thirds are women. Yet when it comes to human rights protection, older women remain among the most invisible: overlooked in policy, undercounted in data, and inadequately protected in law.

This is not accidental. It is the predictable result of a lifetime of gender inequality colliding with ageism. And it is precisely why Canadians, alongside the international community, urgently need a United Nations Convention on the Rights of Older Persons. February 4, 2026 marks an international day of action in support of this convention.

Across the globe, older women experience poverty, violence, discrimination, and social exclusion at disproportionately high rates. Lower lifetime earnings, unequal access to pensions, years spent in unpaid caregiving, and time out of the workforce compound over decades, leaving many women financially insecure in later life. Widowhood, single living, and longer life expectancy further increase vulnerability. Age does not erase gender inequality; in fact, it magnifies it.

In Canada, official poverty statistics often suggest that older adults are doing relatively well. But when we look beyond income alone and consider lived experience, a different picture emerges. Material deprivation data show that older women are significantly more likely than men to struggle with deprivation: to afford basics like adequate food, heating or cooling their homes, and proper winter clothing. Single, racialized, older women who rent are among the most vulnerable. This is a deeply gendered profile of risk that reflects systemic inequality over the life course.

Globally, the situation is often far worse. Older women are more likely to experience neglect, abuse, and violence, particularly in institutional and care settings. In humanitarian crises and climate-related disasters, older women are routinely excluded from response planning and assistance, despite being at heightened risk.

Yet despite the scale and severity of these harms, there is no comprehensive, legally binding international instrument dedicated to protecting the human rights of older persons. This means that age-based discrimination remains widespread and largely unchallenged in law and practice

After years of evidence-gathering and deliberation, the United Nations Open-Ended Working Group on Ageing reached a clear conclusion: the existing international human rights framework does not adequately protect older people. Rights protections are fragmented, inconsistently applied, and insufficiently enforced.

Canada has an opportunity — and a responsibility — to help change this. Canada has now publicly supported moving the development of a Convention on the Rights of Older Persons to the United Nations Human Rights Council and endorsed the creation of an intergovernmental working group to begin drafting a legally binding instrument. Crucially, Canada has not said it will support the convention — just that we will participate in its creation.

This matters. Canada has a long history of global human rights leadership, including strong support for conventions addressing discrimination against women, children, and persons with disabilities.

By backing the drafting of a convention on the rights of older persons, Canada is signalling that age-based discrimination, and its deeply gendered impacts, deserves the same level of international legal protection. Continued Canadian leadership will be critical to ensuring the convention is ambitious, enforceable, and grounded in the lived realities of older women.

A UN Convention would do what existing frameworks have failed to do: explicitly prohibit age discrimination; recognize the intersection of age and gender; and hold governments accountable for protecting older people’s rights across health care, income security, housing, protection from violence, and participation in public life.

Crucially, it would also shift the narrative. Older women are too often treated as passive recipients of care or welfare, rather than as rights holders. A convention would affirm their autonomy, agency, and right to make decisions about their own lives, including where and how they live, the care they receive, and their participation in society.

Population ageing is one of the defining demographic realities of the 21st century. If governments fail to act, the number of women ageing into insecurity, exclusion, and rights violations will only grow.

Human rights do not expire with age. But without a UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons, older women around the world will continue to fall through the cracks of international law. It is time to close those gaps: decisively, legally, and with gender at the centre.

Gabrielle Gallant is a policy and advocacy leader with a career that has included political staff roles, national policy development and civil society leadership. She is a senior policy advisor at HelpAge Canada, and is passionate about advocacy on behalf of older adults.

Margaret Gillis is the founder and president of International Longevity Centres Canada, and a long-time advocate for the rights of older persons. She was a senior civil servant in Canada’s federal government before retiring to focus on human rights advocacy for the last decade.

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