India, Oct. 1 -- India is moving into an older future faster than it realises. What was once a peripheral concern of gerontologists is becoming a defining social question: how to live well in a country where the young are no longer endless and old age is stretching longer than ever. But while ageing will touch everyone, it is already a distinctly female story. Women outlive men, yet they do so with fewer savings, weaker pensions, and far less social security.

Decades of uneven opportunity, lower wages, interrupted careers, unpaid care work, and fragile property rights, leave many women entering later life with little cushion. Widowhood, still steeped in stigma and economic loss, only deepens the gap. Family structures that once absorbed ...