At 68 and single, Donna Ward attracts a lot of assumptions.
People around her tend to assume, for example, that she's separated or divorced (she's not), has grown children (she doesn't) and that a single income easily covers the cost of single living (it doesn't).
Ms Ward feels that the social and financial implications of being an older single person are not seen — and they're not discussed.
There's "a distinct prejudice" against single, older women, she argues.
She calls it the "singlehood penalty".
Managing life on a single income is increasingly difficult, Ms Ward says.
"We're living in an economy now that depends on two incomes to maintain a roof over your head, food on your table, clothes on your back," she tells ABC RN's Life Matters.
Yet, "we don't have a common conversation about it", she says.
"We don't have the ability to reveal this life so that people's assumptions can change … so people can understand what this life is like … So that we can be seen and embraced as part of the Australian society."
Single women 'squeezed from both angles'
Women who live alone aren't rare.
Roughly 16 per cent of Australian women currently live in single-person households, and that number is set to grow, says Myra Hamilton, an associate professor at the University of Sydney's Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research.
"The projections suggest that roughly one in four women of reproductive age today won't have children," she says.
Like Ward, Dr Hamilton also says there are big misconceptions about older single women in Australia.
One is that they must have enjoyed uninterrupted careers because they don't have children.
But 2020 research she led into older single women without children contradicts this.
Of the 45 single older women Dr Hamilton interviewed, two-thirds had experienced extended career interruption — often because of caring responsibilities.
"Older single women without children are much more likely than any other group to do the caring for an older relative, or a relative with a disability or chronic illness," Dr Hamilton says.
Their families viewed them as unencumbered by childcare responsibilities and, therefore, as freer and more flexible with their time. There was an expectation they'd take on primary care responsibilities for ageing parents.
But the research showed that employers also see single older women as more available.
"All the single women in our study tell us that their employers … expected more from them at work than they did of parents with children," Dr Hamilton says.
They described extra pressure to work in personal time, being asked to stay late when others had left to pick up kids, or being told they couldn't take annual leave over certain holiday periods, because parents had priority.
"So it was like being squeezed from both angles as both employers and families viewed them as more flexible with their time."
Single women facing homelessness
Housing for single older women emerged as a huge issue among those in Dr Hamilton's research.
"Older single women are the fastest growing group experiencing homelessness in Australia," she says.
And they have lower levels of home ownership than partnered people.
"Even those that did own their own homes reported feeling very insecure and precarious because they were on one income.
"They reported struggling to continue paying rates and strata fees and upkeep to their properties … and [they had] a sense that if something went wrong, without the cushioning effect of a partner, they could very quickly wind up without a home."
While Dr Hamilton's research showed that single women without children had higher personal incomes than mothers, "the advantages of not having children are overshadowed by the disadvantages of being single".
Renting presents big challenges, too. For example, women in Dr Hamilton's study reported that "real estate agents telling them that a dual income applicant was a more secure option for the landlord than a person on a single income".
Dr Hamilton's research also revealed anxiety among older single women about what would happen when their own health and aged care needs arose.
"Because they didn't have a spouse or children of their own, they expressed a very strong fear about growing older and not knowing who'd be there to support them in the future," she says.
"Many were very worried that they would be forced to move into a residential aged care setting before they were ready."
Ms Ward, who has written about her experiences as a single person in She I Dare Not Name: A Spinster's Meditations on Life, says these are concerns and disadvantages that go largely ignored.
"Society hasn't noticed that there's this rapidly increasing number of women who are choosing not to marry," Ms Ward says.
"We need to accept economically, that people are living single, you know, and so our wages need to match that; our superannuation needs to match it."
Government is listening
Ms Ward considers herself financially privileged; but even she has watched her personal wealth diminish in the current cost-of-living crisis and after recent hits to her superannuation as a result of the COVID pandemic.
"I just think, 'Oh, my God, if I'm feeling this, what is it like if you're financially vulnerable?'" she says.
In December last year, Ms Ward shared her experience at a Melbourne meeting hosted by Ged Kearney, the federal assistant minister for health and aged care, to discuss the challenges faced by single older women without children.
Ms Ward says "the air was wet with emotion" at the meeting, with some women reporting to her afterwards that they were hearing their experience being publicly articulated for the first time.
The issues around single living are, she says, beginning to gain traction.
Ms Kearney is in the process of establishing a reference group — with Ward as its chair — to meet regularly and capture different perspectives, from different demographics, on being an older single woman.
Ms Ward feels that finally discussion about the challenges of single living is beginning, including at the level of federal parliament.
"It's not a puff piece in a lifestyle magazine, you know. People are actually suffering.
"Having a cultural conversation … is the only way we're going to change prejudice and misconceptions," she says.
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