Our Activities

Policy work

We work with NGOs, professionals, government representatives, and researchers to ensure that issues of gender and age are raised at all levels of strategy development and policy implementation.

We make significant inputs through our membership of various organisations at local and national level, as well as being members of AGE Platform Europe and their task groups. We are active within UN ECE region and globally at the UN through membership of the UN NGO Committees on Ageing in Geneva and New York. We are members of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older Persons (GAROP), advocating for equal rights of older women within the UN Human Rights framework including the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), Convention on the Elimination of all form of discrimination against women (CEDAW), the Human Rights Council, the UN Open Ended Working Group on Ageing and the Stakeholder Group on Ageing involved (with other stakeholders) in implementing the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Project work and research

Since its inception, OWN, Europe developed and participated in EU-funded projects and programmes. In recent years we have been happy to join relevant funded partnerships to contribute a gender and age lens to the work. These have been through funded projects implemented by members within their own organisations. The Network has also provided access to grass roots organisations for others seeking to develop partnerships for EU-funded projects.

We also work with academics to identify new and emerging issues for study as well as participating in research, and evaluating results.

Recent examples of member’s research include:Violence against older women: a feminist and intersectional approach, a study commissioned by the Gender Equality Observatory of Catalonia (Catalan Institute of Women, Government of Catalonia) and carried out by the team of the Aroa Foundation under the direction of the OWN Europe’s expert, Neus Pociello Cayuela.