Gender discrimination begins early and accumulates over time, leading to a narrowing of job opportunities and loss of belonging as they get older. Credit: Shutterstock

By Kim Samuel and Bridget Sleap
TORONTO / LONDON, Sep 17 2026 (IPS)

Chung Sun-cha started collecting cardboard, plastic, and other recycling materials off the streets of Incheon, South Korea, to sell when she was in her mid-70s. She is now 87. Without an adequate pension, Chung worked six days a week, sometimes seven, in the wind, rain, and snow until she fell and broke her arm while working in 2025. “I couldn’t find any other work because of my age,” she said.

Chung Sun-cha is not alone. In 2024-2025, Human Rights Watch interviewed 41 women ages 28 to 87 in researching working conditions for women in South Korea. They described how their career opportunities narrowed drastically from their 40s onward to a handful of low-paid, precarious jobs that often caused physical and mental harm, and eroded their sense of belonging.

Work by Belonging Forum in the UK indicates that this loss of belonging in older age is not confined to South Korea. Data from the Belonging Forum’s UK-wide 2026 Belonging Barometer reveals that nearly 19 percent of people ages 65 and older reported that they “not really” or “not at all” feel they belong. Furthermore, 16 percent of respondents 65 and older said they felt lonely “often or some of the time.”

October 1 marks the annual International Day of Older Persons. The United Nations theme for 2026 is “Rethinking Longevity.” Longer lives may bring increased opportunities, including in employment, but for many women, gender discrimination begins early and accumulates over time, leading to a narrowing of job opportunities and loss of belonging as they get older.

These entrenched, negative attitudes, known as “gendered ageism,” coupled with discriminatory employment policies and practices, lock women out of the broader workforce as they age, and isolate them in narrow and undervalued roles

Governments have a vital opportunity when they meet in October at the United Nations in Geneva to continue work on a new international treaty on the rights of older people. The proposed treaty should not merely add age-specific language to existing rights; it should fundamentally reimagine how we value older age.

In South Korea, Jung Kyong-sook, 55, worked as a bookkeeper before stopping work in 1994 to raise her three children. When she re-entered the workforce in 2013, the door was largely shut: “Most of us [women] in our 50s go to work in supermarkets as a cashier or cook in schools. We can’t really pursue our career.”

These outcomes stem from systemic gender and age discrimination that restrict women’s economic opportunities and reduce their sense of belonging and value in society. These entrenched, negative attitudes, known as “gendered ageism,” coupled with discriminatory employment policies and practices, lock women out of the broader workforce as they age, and isolate them in narrow and undervalued roles.

Even the government reflects these prejudices. Jobs the Ministry of Employment and Labor promotes for women in their 30s to 50s on Work24, its online hiring platform, revolve predominantly around beauty, caregiving, and education. The platform funnels women ages 50 or over into low-paid care work, cleaning, kitchen assistance, cooking, and social service jobs, reflecting societal expectations.

For many older women, work is necessary for survival, not a matter of choice. In 2025, women in their late 50s in South Korea faced a 50 percent gender pay gap. Women eligible for the National Old Age Pension faced an average gender pension gap of 47 percent. The average monthly pension for women was just KRW367,000 (£200), 18 percent of the national minimum wage.

Yet work offers something beyond economic survival. Work also gives many of the older women we interviewed a sense of purpose, agency, and belonging. This sense of purpose is a key determinant of the internationally protected right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. Being systematically segregated into ever-narrowing workplaces simply for being a woman considered “too old” – undermines this sense of belonging.

Research from the Belonging Forum shows that belonging does not happen by accident. It is built or broken by the systems, services, and environments that surround people throughout their lives. It depends on access to economic and social structures that determine whether older people have the time, resources, support, and security to participate in family and community life on an equal footing.

Older people can experience an erosion of dignity when society fails to recognize their equal rights and inherent value, operating under the ageist assumption that older age is a period of inevitable decline rather than continued development. The UK Belonging Barometer found that approximately 51 percent of respondents 65 and older “rarely/never” feel that they are working together with others for mutual benefit – pointing to the risk of social marginalization and exclusion in older age.

By embedding dignity, inclusion, equality, economic security, and belonging in the international treaty, we can ensure that women like Chung Sun-cha and Jung Kyong-sook are no longer treated as invisible low-wage workers, but instead as active and valued rights holders thriving in older age, in line with spirit of the International Day of Older Persons.

Kim Samuel is founder and chief architect at the Belonging Forum. Bridget Sleap is senior researcher on the rights of older people at Human Rights Watch.

A man’s legs chained in a Christian rehabilitation center in Ibadan City, Oyo State, Nigeria, Ibadan City, Oyo State, Nigeria, September 2019. Women and men are chained and tied for perceived or actual mental health condition or intellectual disability. © 2019 Robin Hammond for Human Rights Watch.

By Emina Ćerimović and Kim Samuel
NEW YORK, Apr 7 2020 (IPS)

When Akanni’s mother died in early 2018, she stopped eating for three weeks. Her mood became unpredictable; she was often shouting or sulking angrily. Medicine from a local pharmacist didn’t help. At a loss for what to do to handle the trauma, Akanni’s father took her to a church in Abeokuta, Ogun state, in Nigeria. And then he left her there.

The evangelist in the church chained her in a room, where she was left on a bare floor for three days straight with no food or water. She stayed there with a man who was going through a mental health crisis. She felt alone. The staff gave Akanni a pot to urinate and defecate in, right in front of the man.

Human Rights Watch documented that thousands of people with actual or perceived mental health conditions across Nigeria are chained and locked up in various facilities, including state-owned rehabilitation centers, psychiatric hospitals, and faith-based and traditional healing centers

Akanni is still imprisoned in the church. She is deprived of food and water every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until 6 p.m. The staff at church claim this is for fasting purposes as part of her treatment. When she resists, they chain her again.

“Sometimes if they say I should fast and I drink water or take food, they put me on chain,” she told our researchers. “The chaining is punishment. I have been put on chain so many times, I can’t count.”

Akanni is not alone. Human Rights Watch documented that thousands of people with actual or perceived mental health conditions across Nigeria are chained and locked up in various facilities, including state-owned rehabilitation centers, psychiatric hospitals, and faith-based and traditional healing centers.

Many are shackled with iron chains, around one or both ankles, to heavy objects or to other detainees, in some cases for months or years.

Chaining is a global human rights issue. Human Rights Watch has documented its use in numerous countries, including Indonesia, Ghana, Somaliland, and most recently Nigeria.

Like Akanni, people cannot leave these facilities, and are confined in overcrowded, unhygienic conditions, and forced to sleep, eat, and defecate within the same confined place. Many are physically and emotionally abused and forced to take questionable treatments.

People are chained for a range of reasons: when they behave outside what’s considered “the norm,” are going through trauma or grief, or even for getting upset. Like Akanni, who never had access to mental health professionals before her father abandoned her at the church, most Nigerians are unable to get adequate mental health services or support in their communities and rely on traditional and religious healers for support.

A woman’s leg tied tightly together in a Christian rehabilitation center for in Ibadan City, Oyo State, Nigeria, September 2019. Women and men are chained and tied for perceived or actual mental health condition or intellectual disability. © 2019 Robin Hammond for Human Rights.

Stigma and misunderstanding, specifically ideas that mental health conditions are caused by evil spirits or supernatural forces, drive relatives to take their loved ones anywhere the relatives think their loved ones could get help.

Signs of light are appearing. In October, President Muhammadu Buhari denounced chaining as torture, and the Nigerian police carried out raids in Islamic rehabilitation centers in the northern part of the country. Although the Nigerian Constitution prohibits torture and other inhuman or degrading treatment, the government has yet to outlaw chaining people with mental health conditions. The government has also yet to acknowledge that chaining is happening in government-run facilities as well as traditional and other religious centers that are not Islamic.

Today,  as the world  grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, it is more important than ever to end this practice, free people from chains, and ban shackling.

Banning chaining is just the first step. It’s also necessary to monitor and meaningfully enforce the ban. Further, it’s essential to prioritize providing psychosocial support and mental health services as close as possible to people’s own communities.

Humane and accessible care need not be extraordinarily expensive. To give one example, cities and countries around the world are now following the Zimbabwean model of the “Friendship Bench,” a community-led initiative that trains and supports older women to offer talk therapy and make connections to vital social services and mental health care.

Article 5 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is clear that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

But this is more than a violation of the law. When asked what’s worst about being in the church, Akanni was unequivocal. “I feel lonely,” she said. Chaining represents the most extreme imaginable denial of our fundamental human rights.

It strips people of the basic need to belong, connect with community, have a home, learn, express oneself, have agency. It’s an affront to the essence of what makes us human.

Akanni told us she wants to go home, study accounting, get a job, and lead a healthy and joyful life. It’s up to President Buhari, leaders and civil society in Nigeria, and all of us who can exert pressure around the world, to see that she and countless others have a meaningful chance to realize these dreams.

Kim Samuel is founder of the Samuel Center for Social Connectedness, based in Toronto.

Emina Ćerimović is a senior disability rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.