Are grandmothers the change we have been waiting for?

The past few years have seemed especially grim. While a global pandemic rages, with new variants again challenging the daily work of our essential workers, the climate warms and threatens human habitats and food systems, and creates unpredictable and dangerous weather patterns. Our local and global social cohesion and connection suffers, democracy and freedom stumbles, and we have seen a personal toll on mental health.

Amidst all of this, there is reason to be hopeful. At the Grandmother Collective, a major source of our optimism is in the rising recognition of a generation of capable, strong, and powerful humans who are joining a global movement to make life better for their loved ones, for their communities, and for the world.

Who are these magical beings?

Grandmothers and other mature women are rethinking what it means to be old. Through their commitments to intergenerational connection, community connectedness, social and environmental activism, the caretaking of vulnerable children and support for families and a myriad other avenues, grandmothers everywhere are defining a #NewOldAge.

Grandmothers are powerful change makers who connect us with the wisdom of our elders and to chart a progressive and positive pathway toward social connectedness, climate justice, human rights, and cultural preservation.

A few reasons why we are hopeful:

1. Around the world, older women have power that enables them a unique status. Even in highly patriarchal societies, older women have high status. While there are certainly grandmothers who are quite young, a majority are beyond their child-bearing years, which can be a chapter where women feel enormous freedom. In Senegal, where Grandmother Project: Change through Culture has been operating grandma-centered programming for over 15 years, it is very clear that when older women get involved in reproductive and education rights for girls, there are fewer incidences of female genital cutting or early and forced marriage. And grandmothers and women of wisdom are banding together to advocate for environmental and social justice, leveraging their seemingly innocuous positions in society to defend democracy.
2. Grandmothers are abundant and resourceful. Globally, women live longer and are able to contribute to society for longer periods of time. There are roughly 1 billion grandparents in the world, but there are substantially more older women than men. For the first time in history, there are 5 generations of people in the workforce which provides an opportunity to have mentors, teachers, supervisors, teammates and friends from multiple generations. As individuals in our lives biological and surrogate grandmothers provide comfort, connection, and care. Imagine if that was amplified.
3. Grandmothers are instrumental in our social reproduction and cultural memory. Grandmothers are the keepers of tradition. They remind us of our core values and our core identities. Whether they are our biological or adopted grandmothers, older women have the ability to reconnect us to who we are — these are important components of social connectedness and belonging, which is a fundamental human need rooted in the relationships we have and build. Communities that focus on intergenerational connectedness see overall improvements in wellbeing. In the United States, there has been a 10% rise in multigenerational housing since 2007. Now, nearly 1 in 4 households in the US is inhabited by people from across generations. In times of upheaval, we find our way back to each other.
4. Finally, grandmothers are problem solvers and changemakers. When we talk about women of wisdom and experience, we are thinking about the grandmothers in Uganda who are banding together to bring up the orphans in communities still reeling from the HIV/AIDS pandemic. When approached with opportunities to grow businesses, save and invest, send kids to school and grow community wealth, they seize these and radically transform their world. The same is true of grandmothers, like those from Madagascar, who attended Barefoot College. Though they often hail from the most underserved and off-the-grid locations around the world, they take the challenge to attend school to become engineers, bringing new economic opportunities, resources and ideas back to their communities. Grandmothers like these can unleash new ideas and transform society.

These are among a handful of the ways that we see grandmothers as an untapped resource to change the world. Is it an audacious idea?

Absolutely.

Is it based on clear evidence that grandmothers are already playing a powerful role in transforming communities around the world?

Definitely.

Now imagine if we put efforts toward helping more and more older women realize their infinite power to challenge an outdated narrative of old age. We might be able to reverse some of the troubling pathways that the last two years of worldwide economic and health crises have only exacerbated.

Grandmother power is the change we need.

The Grandmother Collective was founded in 2021 as an association to connect, support and advocate for the advancement of grandmothers as resources in social and environmental development worldwide. Our member organizations meet monthly for learning and peer exchange and we will soon begin to host public forums for organizations interested in learning more about how to incorporate grandmother-inclusive programming into change initiatives. Learn more by following us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook or by visiting our website: www.grandmothercollective.org.g.