Photo: Marija JankovićAlmost half of the elderly women in Serbia live in rural areas. Their socio-economic position is much worse compared to their urban peers
More than 100.000 elderly women are outside the pension system, which means that every eighth elderly woman in Serbia does not have a pension - this is just one of the worrying data that was heard at today's presentation of the "Special Report of the Protector of Citizens on the representation of social and health care services for elderly women who they live in the countryside".
Out of 806.000 women over the age of 65, 336.000 of them live in rural areas, mostly in Šumadija, then in Western Serbia, Eastern Serbia, Vojvodina, and the least in the Belgrade area, said Amiti Nadežda Satarić, representative of the Strength of Friendship association.
"When we talk about older women from the countryside, what we can say in general is that their socio-economic position is much worse compared to their peers, who live in urban areas and compared to their peers from both rural and urban areas", said Satarić.
Elderly women in the countryside are not a homogenous group, so their position cannot be assessed in general, Satarić believes. She emphasized that "it is not the same to be a woman and to live in a suburban municipality of Belgrade, where all the necessary infrastructure for them is much more developed, where they have much more chances to do business and to market what they do in agriculture, and to be a woman in the south and the south - the east of Serbia," she explained and added "that in Belgrade, many more products can be sold, especially since 42 percent of the country's GDP is formed in Belgrade."
The level of education of older women from the countryside is much lower compared to their peers from rural areas, as well as men from both rural and urban areas. "According to the census from 2011, because we do not have more recent data, of the 89.000 illiterate adult residents of Serbia, the largest number of them are precisely women over 65 years old. Our assumption is that these women are mostly from rural areas," noted Satarić.
The Protector of Citizens, Zoran Pašalić, believes that their position should be accurately determined in relation to the rights that everyone else has, which are not enforced, even though they are regulated by changes in the law.
"We will insist on this topic and this research, visit most cities in Serbia so that the public understands the position of elderly women in the countryside, which must be improved," Pašalić said.
The most important thing is to provide social and health insurance to elderly women in the countryside, Pašalić believes, "because work at home is not valued at all."
The Protector also recommends that indicators of the quality of the home treatment service provided be prescribed, which would be specific to the target group of elderly women in the countryside. It is also necessary for competent authorities to establish a systematic and centralized collection and processing of data on the realization of economic and social rights and rights in the field of health care at the state, provincial and local levels. Local self-government units are recommended to distribute part of the funds in such a way as to ensure the continuous financing of social and health care services for elderly women in the countryside.
S.Ć./FoNet
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