LA PAZ, Bolivia (HelpAge International) April 20, 2008:
HelpAge International, Latin America, has submitted a report on Older Women’s Rights In Rural Bolivia to the 40th session of the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The experience of HelpAge International and its partners has been that older women in Bolivia face discrimination on the basis of their gender, age, poverty and race. Older women are more likely than older men to live alone and without support, to have the burden of care for dependents, to experience violence and to be denied their rights to social security, security in old age, health and representation.
Older women and men are disproportionately poor in Bolivia, South America’s poorest country, with a Human Development ranking of 1177 and a GDP per capita of $27208. In terms of the gender disparity, its gender-related development index (GDI) is 99.4% of the value of its HDI and its gender empowerment measure (GEM) ranks 67th out of 94 countries, with a value of 0.5009.
More than 63% of the older people in Bolivia live in poverty, compared to 58.6% for the general population. Twenty-three percent of the Bolivian population live on less than a dollar a day, whereas approximately 36% of older people in Bolivia live on less than US$1 per day, 12 with poverty indices significantly higher in the rural older population.
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Contact:HelpAge International,
La Paz, Bolivia:
Fiona Clark, Director of Policy and Programmes. E-mail: fclark@helpagela.org
Bridget Sleap,
Policy Officer.
E-mail: bsleap@helpage.org
