Helen Walmsley-Johnson is an accomplished writer and personal assistant with many years of experience. A woman at the top of her professional game - and a woman over the age of fifty. So why is it that, after hundreds of job applications, she remains unemployed? We hear from The Guardian's Invisible Woman on why older women desperately need to be taken seriously as job hunters.
Why over 50s NEED to be part of the work force.
Another week, another report. This time it's the catchy acronym PRIME (the Prince’s Initiative for Mature Enterprise) pointing out the bleeding obvious - that there are "a significant number of over 50s who would be willing to work if the right opportunity arose" but that we are "failing to harness their potential". I'd say never mind "willing to work" what about "need to work", because that's the truth of it. We need to work and it's not about being able to afford a National Trust membership or a scented candle from time to time, it's about whether you pay the gas bill or buy some food, whether you pay the rent or the water rates.
This is the umpteenth such report in about 18 months. We've had the TUC's Age Immaterial, the Commission on Older Women Interim Report, UNISON's Sandwich Generation and the DCMS's Maximising women's contribution to future economic growth. Then there's The Fawcett Society's The Changing Labour Market 2 (follow up to The Changing Labour Market 1) and Saga's The Saga Generations, not to mention the appointment of Dr Ros Altmann as the UK Government's Older Workers Business Champion. There are reams and reams of it - and I've read it all, every last word and full stop. None of this (no doubt) expensive research will help anyone unless it is translated into action.
My own story is fairly typical. I took voluntary redundancy two years ago (at 57) to develop the next stage of my career and to spend time with my 87-year-old father who was dying from lung cancer. I stepped down with a redundancy payment, a literary agent and a weekly fashion column - a good set of circumstances, I thought, for supporting myself with writing in later life. I do know that I will need to support myself - no one at my level of working has a pension pot worth a damn, I don't own property, I have no assets - except my skills and experience. My intention was to work part-time or temp to support my writing but this unexpectedly turned out to be the flaw in my plan. Although I was at the top of my profession as a personal assistant it appeared that I was unemployable. I registered with four agencies, one of whom knew me well and had worked with me when I was hiring. In two years I have had two interviews. It seems I have unintentionally retired.
When the final demands start to come you ignore them while you can because you still have a tiny bat squeak of hope that surely something will turn up. You keep scanning the sits vac and sending off applications (over 500 in my case). Then you miss your rent payment and the threat of eviction starts to loom.
Let me tell you what happens to a single woman over 50 in this situation. The first struggle is with your self-esteem when you realise that, although you have experience of setting up control rooms for dealing with a hostage situation in Afghanistan (yes, really), you are apparently not sufficiently qualified to be someone's part-time secretary or, as your expectations lower, to be left in charge of a supermarket till, or stack shelves. I wasn't fussy, I'd have happily done either. While all this is going on your savings dwindle until you start to miss bills. When the final demands start to come you ignore them while you can because you still have a tiny bat squeak of hope that surely something will turn up. You keep scanning the sits vac and sending off applications (over 500 in my case). Then you miss your rent payment and the threat of eviction starts to loom. You don't know what to do or where to turn so you set your pride to one side and try the welfare office who are kind but have suffered their own economic setbacks and you're not on the street, yet. You start going to bed hungry because you can't afford to eat properly and then your health begins to suffer. The stress begins to take over and you find you can't sleep. You start to put things in hock to pay the rent and keep a roof over your head - precious things you haven't a hope of getting back.
You find that when you go out you scuttle from destination to destination and try to avoid looking at anyone in case they can read the worry and shame in your face. You haven't had a haircut in 18 months and have run out of makeup so you start to worry that if you do get an interview you will look scruffy and unprofessional. You can't afford to visit your family much but when you do you put on a front. You are exhausted. You are so spent you have no tears at your father's funeral. Eventually you acknowledge that you can't go on but you're trapped by the hope that if you can just hang on a little bit longer then all you've worked for can be saved. It's the hope that kills you.
So, for the love of God, don’t bung us yet another report into the depressing status quo - tell us instead what can and will be done.
There seems to be an assumption that age is a barrier, and maybe that is what stops people from even applying, or maybe too many see domestic services as beneath them. Well for me, and I know I'm not the only employer out here who would say it, rejecting older workers is most definitely NOT what we would do!!! Quite the opposite.