Women’s Voices from the Global South: Ageing and Gender in Brazil and India

This paper seeks to answer the following research question: How is a sense of place experienced by older women from different cultural backgrounds living in low income neighbourhoods in Brazil and India? This work is part of the PlaceAge Project (2016-2021), funded by ESRC/ UK and ICSSR/ India. The methodology applied photo diaries to capture the perceptions of older women in their everyday life across three cities and six low-income communities in Brazil and India. Our results identified that the experiences of older women were deeply ingrained in traditional familial and community roles and encoded in spatial practices in terms of how women moved around the home and community and accessed services. Women’s roles were often confined to caregiving and domestic labour, whilst the ability to develop wider social and community relations were impacted by barriers to mobility, and feelings of insecurity moving around public spaces. The paper highlights the impact of structural inequalities on experiences of place, gender and age including in relation to education, welfare and social norms which impacted on access to supports and outcomes in later life. We reflect on some key considerations for how the development of cities and urban spaces can challenge some of the patriarchal ways in which they are conceived, developed and maintained.