Older Women's Network (Ontario), Inc

10/02/2026

Oct. 1st is National Seniors Day. The government released what looks like 3 important reports. You can see and download them here: Innovative housing models that can accommodate a diverse population of seniors in Canada.
https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/corporate/seniors-forum-federal-provincial-territorial/reports-publications/innovative-housing-diverse-older-adults.html
Policy and program options to prevent and address financial abuse of older adults.
https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/corporate/seniors-forum-federal-provincial-territorial/reports-publications/financial-mistreatment-older-persons.html
Policy options to facilitate the development and use of assistive technologies designed to help older adults live healthy, satisfying and independent lives.
https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/corporate/seniors-forum-federal-provincial-territorial/reports-publications/assistive-technologies-support-seniors.html

09/12/2026

Now here is an appalling statistic: "The leading cause of death in pregnant women in the U.S. is homicide. Pregnant women are more likely to be murdered by a partner or ex than to die of all the leading pregnancy-related medical causes combined."
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Bke5ZAbx3/

The leading cause of death in pregnant women in the U.S. is homicide.

Pregnant women are more likely to be murdered by a partner or ex than to die of all the leading pregnancy-related medical causes combined.

Yes, really. For pregnant and postpartum women in the U.S., the greatest threat to survival isn't a medical complication. During pregnancy and up to one year postpartum, a woman’s risk of homicide increases by approximately 35% compared to women of reproductive age who are not pregnant or recently postpartum.

This alarming trend is deeply tied to domestic abuse and gun violence, with data from 2008 to 2019 showing that 71% of these pregnancy-associated homicides involved intimate partner violence, and 68% were committed with a fi***rm.

The risk is not distributed equally, revealing deep racial disparities as Black women face roughly three times the risk of being killed by an intimate partner during or shortly after pregnancy compared to white or Hispanic women.

Furthermore, these fatal acts of intimate partner violence are highly concentrated during the earliest stages of pregnancy, clustering most heavily in the first trimester, while dropping to their lowest levels in the first three months postpartum. This tragic pattern highlights a critical window for healthcare providers to intervene, screen for domestic violence, and potentially save lives during early prenatal care.

source: Modest, A. M., Prater, L., & Joseph, N. T. (2022). Pregnancy-Associated Homicide and Su***de: An Analysis of the National Violent Death Reporting System, 2008–2019. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 140(4), 565-573.

07/19/2026

Laughter Healing Circle:
Date: every Wednesday at 11:30 am – 12:00 pm
Location: Zoom (you’ll get the link after registration.)
Cost: Free
Laughter is the best medicine.
In this group, we laugh together through laughter exercises known as laughter yoga. Laughter Yoga is a unique health concept in which we can laugh for a long time without jokes, humor, or comedy. The concept is based on scientific evidence that both genuine laughter and self-simulated laughter are beneficial to the body. No experience needed. No equipment needed.
Join us if you want to have a little break from your stress, worries or loneliness.
This program is for residents in Ontario, all ages are welcome.
Please register from the link below.
https://forms.gle/TsYXbXgqheqBDSZb9

06/07/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1D5E3LoiQ8/
Group of women create co-housing just for women.

26 women. One iconic London sisterhood.

These women weren’t interested in aging quietly alone, so they built Britain’s first female-only co-housing community for older women. The complex is made up of 25 flats, plus plenty of shared spaces to garden, cook, watch movies, laugh, and live life together.

Think less “retirement home,” more “Golden-Girls-meets-dream-commune.” And there’s one very important distinction: they’re here to look out for one another, not after one another.

"It’s just nice to have other people around when you want them," resident Vivien Sheehan, 79, says. ""The onus is on really not being lonely, but it’s so fabulous because you can be lonely if you want to," said Mags Beltran, 77.

05/27/2026

Technology is making it more difficult for seniors to get medical care or other help. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18eH99jW63/

A society that forces a 90 year old to use a smartphone to access services is not a modern society. It's a sick society that easily forgets its elders. 😥

By 2026, everything goes through an app, code, password, or online portal.

By those who built Canada hard work done.. and they find it today in front of screens that they don't always understand.

When an elderly person has to call their son, daughter or grandchildren just to make an appointment, pay a bill or fill out a government paper... something is not working anymore.

Progress is not when a part of the population feels left out in their own country.

Technology should make life easier for everyone, not just for those who are comfortable with a phone.

Because a society that leaves its elders behind does not become more modern.

She just keeps getting colder and less human.
Credit: Mario Beauchesne
゚

04/19/2026

This is a very sad statistic in this day and age.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CcNp8NbUy/

A recent study has confirmed what every woman instinctively knows: men and women experience the simple act of walking through the world in fundamentally different ways -- with women performing an invisible, automatic threat assessment that begins the moment they step outside alone.

Researchers at Brigham Young University showed nearly 600 college students photographs of campus walking paths at four Utah universities and asked them to click on the areas that stood out most as they imagined walking through those spaces alone. They turned the responses into heat maps -- and the differences were stark.

Men looked at the path ahead. The destination. A streetlight, a garbage can, the walkway in front of them. Women scanned the periphery -- the bushes, the dark corners, the spaces alongside the path where someone could be hiding. As lead researcher Robert Chaney put it, they "expected to see some differences, but we didn't expect to see them so contrasting. It's really visually striking."

The gap widened dramatically at night and in what the researchers call "high-entrapment" settings -- narrow bridges, walled paths, spaces where escape would be difficult. In those conditions, the heat maps were so structurally different that the two groups were essentially looking at entirely different environments.

And there is good reason for that vigilance. Women aged 18-24 are four times more likely to experience sexual violence than women of other age groups. Among college women, there are two sexual assaults for every one robbery -- a complete inversion of the ratio in the general population. That scanning isn't paranoia. It's pattern recognition built on a lifetime of lived experience.

But the study reveals something beyond individual behavior -- it reveals who our shared spaces are built for. Those walkways, bridges, and campus paths were designed by people who see space the way the men in this study do: eyes forward, focused on the destination. A narrow walled bridge with a single light at the end works fine for the person who looks straight ahead. It doesn't work for the person whose eyes go immediately to the dark edges on either side.

It's not that anyone set out to make public spaces feel unsafe for women. It's that many of the people making design decisions rarely had to scan for danger themselves -- so they never thought to design for those who do. The threat isn't just in the shadows. It's in the fact that no one considered the shadows at all.

Co-author Alyssa Baer said her hope is that having concrete data will start conversations that lead to meaningful action in designing safer spaces. Chaney went further: "Why can't we live in a world where women don't have to think about these things?"