There has been a lot in the media recently about how difficult women in their 40s and 50s are finding it to get another job.
And I have mixed feelings every time I read another one of these stories.
On the one hand, I think it's really important that we talk about ageism at work. Women shouldn't be overlooked because of their age, and we shouldn't pretend that finding another job in your 50s is necessarily as straightforward as it might have been earlier in your career. All of the women who have shared their experiences have had an awful time.
But I also wonder what all these headlines are doing to the women reading them.
Because if you're 48, 52 or 57 and already unhappy at work, being repeatedly told how difficult it is for women your age to get hired isn't exactly going to encourage you to consider your options.
It's more likely to make you think: I'd better stay where I am. And that's what worries me.
Being frightened to leave isn't the same as wanting to stay
I've talked a lot about women reaching midlife and realising that the work they've been doing for years simply doesn't fit anymore.
Maybe you dread Mondays. Maybe you've lost interest in something you once enjoyed. Perhaps your priorities have changed, or you want more flexibility. Or maybe you're simply looking at the next 10 or 15 years and thinking: I really don't want to spend them doing this.
None of that disappears because the job market is difficult. But fear can make it very easy to put those thoughts to one side. You tell yourself you're lucky to have a job. You remind yourself that you're earning a decent salary. You read another article about women over 50 struggling to find work and decide that leaving would be far too risky.
So you stay.
And perhaps staying is the right decision for now. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But I'd like it to be a decision you've made rather than one fear has made for you.
I'm not suggesting you hand in your notice
When I talk about changing your working life, I don't mean walking into work tomorrow, resigning and hoping everything somehow works itself out.
I've been made redundant three times. I know what it's like to have your working life changed for you and to have to work out what comes next. I also know that bills still need paying while you're doing it. For most of us, financial security matters.
So if you're unhappy at work, the first question doesn't have to be:
What other job can I get?
Perhaps a better question is:
What could I change?
Another job isn't your only option
We tend to think about changing our working lives in a very traditional way. You have one job. You don't like it. You find another one. You resign and move. But by midlife, there can be far more possibilities than that.
Perhaps there's a different role within the organisation you're already working for. Maybe you could change your hours or responsibilities. You might want to learn something new while staying in your current job, or start building a freelance income alongside it.
You might eventually decide to work for yourself. You could combine several different types of work. You might earn less but gain something that's become more valuable to you - time, flexibility, interest or independence.
And yes, you might decide you want another employed job.
The point is that you don't have to know the answer before you start thinking about the question.
Midlife isn't the time to stop thinking about what you want
I think this is the part that's getting lost in some of the conversation about older women and work. We talk about women in their 50s as though they're approaching the end of their working lives. They're not. If you're 50 now, you could potentially be working for another 15 or 20 years. Think about how long that actually is. Fifteen years ago was 2011.
Would you have wanted someone back then to tell you that whatever work you were doing at the time was what you had to keep doing for the next 15 years because changing might be difficult? Probably not.
Yet that's effectively what we risk telling women now when the conversation becomes entirely about how difficult it is to get hired after 50.
We need to be realistic but we also need to have options
I'm not interested in telling women that age is just a number or that if you want something badly enough, it will happen. I’ll leave the manifesting to the Gen Zers!
The reality is more complicated than that.Ageism exists. The world of work is changing quickly. Recruitment has changed. AI is changing some jobs altogether. And finding a new role at 50 may take longer or require a different approach than it did at 30. But I don't think the answer is to frighten women into staying exactly where they are.
I think the answer is to start looking at work differently. What do you still want from it? What don't you want anymore? What are you good at? What experience have you accumulated that you could use differently? What compromises are you prepared to make and which ones aren't you?
And what could you start doing now, while you still have the security of your current job, to give yourself more choices later?
You don't have to make a dramatic change. You don't even have to leave. But if your work doesn't fit your life anymore, I don't think you should ignore that simply because the headlines tell you that change is difficult.
Being realistic about the job market and believing you still have choices aren't mutually exclusive.
And perhaps that's where the conversation about midlife women and work needs to go next.
