Storying older women’s immobilities and gender-based violence in the Covid 19 pandemic

In June 2021 the United Nations produced a report on the rise of violence against older people during the Covid 19 pandemic. In particular, older people in care homes across the world faced an increased risk of ‘neglect, isolation and lack of adequate services’ (UN 2021). The report also highlights the increase in GBV against older people whose mobility is restricted due to lockdowns. Studies of GBV during the pandemic (or beforehand) do not tend to disaggregate according to age (Diamini 2021), but evidence suggests that older people can be particularly exposed to GBV by intimate partners, children and carers. An online survey carried out in India by the Agewell Foundation in June 2020, found that 71 per cent of respondents said they felt that the lockdown increased incidence of elder abuse. Studies have also found that crowded living spaces, such as those in refugee camps, can lead to an increase in GBV (Peterman et al. 2020). Older women are more likely to have a lifetime of GBV experiences, but they are often obscured in life and fiction writing, including those focused on GBV. This chapter draws on our UK Arts and Humanities Research Council funded research on storying GBV to illuminate older women’s experiences of GBV. Adopting a generationed approach, the chapter argus that the invisibilising of older women in accounts of GBV not only diminishes our understanding of GBV overall but creates injustice.