I had two days away this week at an account meeting. It wasn’t fun but the job got done, I spent the night in a nameless faceless soulless hotel and my expense claim is yet to be entered.
The night I stayed over I met with some of my team for dinner and drinks. Hair was let down, beer flowed, and we were chatting as you do when you have a chance to get to know the person behind the suit and action point log. One of my technical guys was talking about age and his views since turning 40.
“I mean, you know what it’s like,” he said to me.
“Sorry?” I asked, mid-wine sipping. “What do you mean?”
“Well you’re over 40, right?” he asked.
“Cheers, mate,” I said frostily. “I’m 36.”
“Oh fuck.”
“Yeah, oh fuck. What made you think I was 40?”
“Well, I mean…sorry, you know, it’s just. Well you’re married!”
“You twigged the wedding ring, well done, but you don’t get carded when you show up at the altar, there is no ‘Under 40 need not apply!’ sign at the registry office. I’ve been married for one month, man. One month.”
One month, and clearly I need to bathe in some Oil of Olay at my first convenience. I know I looked was (and looked) tired, but I certainly didn’t think I look rode hard and put up wet.
“You’re also a director!” he proclaimed weakly.
I’m not a director, actually, but this brought me to something else.
I was talking to my brother-in-law the other day. My brother-in-law has the same job role as I have, although I have been doing this line of work for over a decade and he’s been doing it for about six seconds.
“I’m looking to be promoted,” he told me.
“Promoted!” I exclaimed. “You’ve only been doing this job for a short while! I’ve been doing it for ages and haven’t been promoted myself!”
“Yes, but I’m older.”
“Only by a few years.”
“I’m also a man.”
Dead silence descended. “And what, pray tell, are you trying to tell me that your penis entitles you to?”
“Well as the breadwinner I should make more money than you do.”
Wait just a fucking minute, Alonso. Laura Ingalls called, she wants her bucket back. “Hang on – I’m better qualified than you are in this area. By a long shot.”
“Yes but that’s not how it works, is it?”
And on that note, the man is right.
Something I’ve realized, looking around the office. Now it might be because I work in an engineering space. It might be because I work in an industry that is predominately male by quite a large percentage. But the truth is this: When I look around the office I see a lot of men with snow white hair who have corner offices and personal assistants (all of them female, of course). The seniority is for men who have rounded the half century mark and plow onwards.
When I look around the office, there is not a single woman over fifty in anything even resembling a position of authority. In fact, the only silver-haired ladies that I see are executive assistants. And I think back to all the engineering firms I have worked for and it rings true across the board – there are no older women in positions of authority. In fact, in most of the companies I worked for, there were no women in positions of authority at all.
I won’t flog that dead horse.
What I will get my stripped birch out for the equine is this: where are all the older women in the workforce?
Are we held in a mysterious holding pen, whereby we spend all our time knitting cozies for Kleenex? Are we the ones manning the stationary cupboard and making sure no one steals the whiteboard markers? Are women let free only at night, to tidy up the cables of people’s laptops?
Based on the fact that although I seem to have a dozen pension accounts all of them are worth about £6.50, I will be working until I die, even if I actually don’t want to work until I drop. Not only do I have to work, I (at this point in my career) want to work (and this is not where we get out the other dead horse of work versus stay-at-home. This is not that conversation.) But if I think I’m at or nearly at the pinnacle of my career now, what does that mean moving ahead? Why is it that older men are in positions of knowledge and authority and women – at least in my industry – seem to be placed in keeping the diaries of said trailblazers? Do we reach a point where we think “Eh, not fucking worth the stress and aggro anymore”, or is that decision made for us? Is it an issue that women are often married to men who are older than they, ergo it suits us to retire when they do? Or is it that life just burns us out that much sooner?
I know that other industries are probably a lot more embracing of older women in the workforce. It simply appears mine isn’t. Unless of course you’re me, and one of your team assume you’re five years older than you really are.
-S.
I fear, at the present time, you are correct. However, opportunities today are better than when you were a wee lass. Examples are the number of women in professional school such as law and medicine.
Basic economics will continue to open doors for women. Nora will have more opportunity than the present generation.
I, too, work in the (male-dominated) engineering field, and I hear ya on this one. I’ve been supporting myself my entire life, yet because I’m not a man, I evidently don’t “need” to make as much as the men do. Sheesh.
I will give you one theory: Menopause makes some women CRAZY. I saw it happen at my mom’s workplace. I see the nutjobs in my office. In about 10 years, our entire system may implode as the large quantity of women hired to meet EOE standards reach the end of their childbearing years. I suspect that the work required to advance just becomes too much effort when you’re using all your energy to make everyone else miserable (in at least 3 separate incidents I have watched menopausal women do their damnedest to get a coworker fired).
Alternatively, perhaps professional women who reach a certain level and a certain age just get tired of pushing that glass ceiling out of the way. It doesn’t require quite as much effort for men, so they can hang around longer.
I think it is because women over 50 grew up and were educated in a society in which career women were very few and far between. Things have really only changed relatively recently.
I am a lawyer in a UK firm that consists of around 100 people. Of the lawyers, 18 are men and 21 are women. 9 of the 18 men are partners whilst only 3 of the 21 women are partners (and non-equity partners, at that). The rest are support staff and every single one is female!!
Thinks *should* change in the future but, in this situation at least, entry to the positions at the top is controlled by MEN over 50…as a young female lawyer I am very aware that my prospects of partnership are sadly very dim despite that fact that I am one of the top earners.
Until such time as the only generations left in the workforce are those that see women as equal in the workplace rather than subordinate, we won’t get to the top of the tree in the numbers that we should.
I’m a (lowly) Divisional Director in an FTSE 100 manufacturing company with a global reach. My boss is a 50ish woman (who is the Division FD). The refinery manager in China is female, as is the UK one. There are some, but not many. It is definately changing, though – and people like a (above) are starting to become the minority.
Oh wow. Your brother-in-laws head is still attached right? Holy mother of —- “I need to earn more as the major breadwinner.” I feel like I just got stuck in the 70′s somewhere with that attitude. Wow, we have a lot of work to do for our future daughters (ok I only have 2 sons, but you know what I mean). We have to work smarter not harder than these dinosaurs. Here in SAfrica, they make a big deal about promoting women, but ultimately things are still run by the old boys club too. Although, as a black female – you are most likely to be promoted according to their little scale of ‘affirmative action employability’ whatsits. White males? Endangered species around these parts…hence our imminent move back to the UK…
I also see a lot of high level men dropping dead at a young age. Maybe women are too smart to put the effort into getting that far ahead when the price is usually a decline in the quality of the other aspects of life.
Ooh, and I would like to add that many women over 50 are wives of those men at the top and are not working because they are supporting those men, doing all the other stuff in daily life that needs to be done. The stuff that is exhausting to deal with on top of a demanding job. I think I would find my job an awful lot easier if it was all I needed to do because someone else was taking care of everything else.
Also, a, I am really sorry to hear about your experiences with those particular women (do you know they were actually menopausal?!) but I am offended on my mother’s behalf by your comments about menopausal women.
Have you seen the blog My Fault I’m Female? It’s all about those incidents where the primary “problem” is attributed to a woman just because she’s a woman, in spite of the evidence. Your above anecdote about the BIL would count.
What I’ve noticed is that the worst incidents all seem to be from the UK. I’m not sure why, but the hidebound attitude seems to be really entrenched there. (As opposed to the US, where the attitudes are still held, but the perpetrators of those attitudes are more defensive about it instead of taking it for granted.)
I heard a story on NPR (a liberal radio station in America) saying that testosterone (t) plays a large part in how aggressive and ambitious people are. Women who get t-injections become more aggressive while men whose t is reduced become more passive.
It may be a simple physiological issue of our internal chemistry. Since men naturally have more t than women, maybe they remain aggressive & ambitious in larger numbers and for a longer time than women.
But I’m sure some of it’s due to the “Good ol’ boys Club” too.
I too am amazed you left him with his head intact. Is this a common mode of thinking in the UK’s business world? Because over here most men would be run out of town on a rail for voicing such a blatantly crass and chauvinistic opinion, probably with a sexual harassment charge to boot, at least in the business circles I’ve seen.
Interesting, having come from a lifetime and a career of Technical Support at various levels, we were almost all women! Almost exclusively actually, except for the “Director” he was a dumb ass with a Penis, a small one I bet!
Some of it- maybe most of it- is a holdover from societal conventions. A lot of colleges on my side of the pond didn’t event accept women until the 1970s or early 1980s. That would tend to reduce the pool of qualified female applicants. No education in a certain field, no job.
Fortunately, that is changing. My current boss (and three of the four before her) is a woman. And she’s younger than me. However, she’s better at the job and therefore deserves it.
Maybe I’m fortunate to work (or have worked) in two fields where experience and merit are the end all, be all, at least in my neck of the woods: IT and engineering. I haven’t encountered bullshit such as you just described, for which I am quite grateful.
Hmmm. I guess I should be offended on several levels by all this. I am one of those over 50′s (over 60 actually) women (and yes, post-menopausal – duh!) who works as – gasp – a legal secretary. I find that my role in the office is really quite important, and I have chosen this role, rather than going to law school. I guess I just didn’t want the responsibility. I’ve been doing this sort of job for nearly 40 years now and absolutely love it. I make my job as important as I want it to be. The attorneys I work for rely on my quite heavily for things that could make or break their practice. They trust me and would be lost without me. I chose this field a long time ago and have no regrets. I guess I’m just of a different era… By the way, I’m probably going to retire in a year or so. I have more than enough money socked away in 401(k) accounts and personal IRAs and my house is paid for, so I guess I didn’t do too badly for being “just an assistant.” I’m just sayin’… :-)
So, not only is the HR department (a dept in which you won’t often find many chaps, btw) hiring too many chaps, but they are also hiring the stupid, and, more alarmingly, THE BLIND.
I agree a lot of it might be due to the fact that things have changed only recently. I believe in the coming years we will *hopefully* see more women working longer in their respective fields, and getting the promotions/advancements that they are due-then, again *hopefully*, there will be a more level playing field; it won’t just be men in the top positions, thus encouraging a whole new generation of women. Who knows, you still might be a trail-blazer after all.
Regarding your brother-in-law: What. the. fuck.
Regarding your age: If you look 40 after one month of marriage, I must be like the damn Crypt Keeper after 15 years. And I’m one year older then you in the first place. Holy hell.
So a few things on this:
1) I never said “just” about the executive assistants. The assistants are the ones Who Must Be Obeyed. They are the eyes and ears of a corporation and they tend to know more than most in terms of what’s going on. That said, I have heard how the people they are assistants to can sometimes refer to them, and it is not in the glowing terms that they deserve. In the company I am in now the women are respected and nearly revered, however in the last company I was in had I been one of them, I’d have filed a few complaints about my treatment. I’ve also seen first-hand what happens when an exec assistant steps down and joins the ranks of those of us who are not on first name basis with board members, and they can become badly demoralized and even leave the company on compassionate leave (as someone I know did recently). So if I seemed like I was rubbishing executive assistants, that wasn’t my intention and I apologize if it came across that way.
2) That said, there are women in the ranks I work in. Not many, but some. Yet there are not a lot of executive assistant positions. So my question remains – where do we go? Where do the women go later in our careers? If – say – I work in an organization with 10 women, but there are only 2 executive assistants and no women in senior positions – then where do 8 of us go later in our careers? This was meant to be the crux of my post – what happens to us later in our careers?
3) I don’t know about menopausal women in my career. I do, however, look back on when I was in fertility treatment and working and I don’t know how I wasn’t sacked. I was so hormonal I was unreasonable and unbearable. This is not considered a parallel to women going through menopause, by the way, but me almost wondering if there’s something to the concern of hiring women of childbearing (or fertility treatment) age. Wait, think I shot myself in the foot there.
4) I love my brother-in-law, but he’s a conservative traditionalist with a side of chauvinist. He makes it hard to not call him a twat, so I go ahead and do it.
You might just be in the wrong engineering field in the wrong country. I work in electrical (doe)and the top level mgmt is mostly women. The mid-level is about equal as well as the low level engineers. of course this is .gov so they have to play by a different set of rules than private sector. There it is truely “every MAN for himself” dog eat dog, as long as I get mine. all those cliches apply.
Hi Shannon, Maybe I was just being too sensitive. An age-related thing perhaps. I don’t understand how I can possibly be on the “wrong” side of 60! Although I guess it beats the alternative. Thank you. :-)
I’d never really thought about it before, but you’re right. There are very few women at my level and pretty much none above. Though I do wonder, is that because the idea of women in engineering fields is still fairly new and none of us have just gotten that far yet?
I can’t believe he said that to you! And you didn’t punch him!
I’m in technical consulting and while many of the developers/architects/geeks I work with are men, we have quite a few women in upper level management. I’m a Senior Project Manager with twin girls that are two, and I can’t see myself wanting that level of work hours and angst anytime soon though, so I think this is probably where I’ll hang out for a while. Beyond that? No idea.
You might find more older women as educators or nurses, those were the more accessible professions for women 40 years ago. The traditional business world you’re in is pretty inflexible, time-wise, and unforgiving of family pressures that interfere with productivity. Maybe business women lose patience with all that nonsense and take their experience to industries with more friendly policies. I’m thinking real estate agents, brokers, insurance agents, and small business owners. Don’t those industries seem to be mostly female? Or maybe that’s just my anecdotal experience, but all those professionals I’ve used that spring to mind were women in the 50-60 age bracket.
Okay, I know I should have been offended by the things your brother-in-law said but all I can focus on is that you said “Alonso”.
ALMANZO!!!
I think all the women are working at my healthcare field company (a.k.a. The Convent). It’s a good 80% women in most areas, though admittedly it’s more like 20% women in executive positions.
OK, I’m gonna turn on a small penlight of hope here. When I worked at the BabyBell – I worked for a 40-something female director who wore bright red skirts and lipstick and was clearly gonna run the place someday. There were 2 other female sr. managers, 30-somethings and a fifty-something manager who I think was a lifer at that level but still – 40%of the mgmt team had ta-tas (well, more – but those guys, do we need to discuss?).
At the IT corp I spent most of my career, I was often the only woman manager – but not always. About 15%-20% of program mgrs were women, most over 45. Hard engineering side, us chicks came fewer and younger – but they were there and creating whole new paradigms. (Let me just have a moment to remember our creation of a nursing room…ok, thanks.)
But you’re absolutely right – women over 50 in engineering are 4-to-1 some kind of an assistant. And what twists my panties is that THESE were the women that were on the front line of equal rights. I hope you
stick, S. All the way. For those of us who dropped out and wussed out for a life of “mommy needs a valium, sweetie!”
I’m in academia and its just as bad here. The majority of PhD researchers are female in a ratio of at least 80:20 if not more. I can count on one hand (maybe two fingers…) how many women there are in faculty positions. There is also a massive discrepancy between pay between men and women. Most people here blame the problems due to women taking time off for maternity leave and not being able to get back into science because of the time they have spent away. Basicallythe field “moves too quickly” and often grants work on a publish or perish attitude – if you aren’t publishing often then you can’t get grants, but you need grants for money to do the research to publish. I suspect women are getting out academia to find work which is reliable in its pay and not so high pressured, and I have to say I am considering getting out to go to industry just so I can have decent job prospects, a reliable pay package, pension benefits and decent opportunities for promotion.
I have no doubt that these inequalities exist everywhere but I do have to say that in our public sector the majority of senior positions are held by women. And there are plenty of them in private industry as well.
Most of my recent work experience has been in IT where the gender imbalance generally mitigates against too many of the women making it into the top positions. But, in my own case, with 17 years working at part time roles and improving my educational qualifications while raising my family (and this is not that conversation either), I never expected to find myself in executive level roles quite as quickly as I did when I returned to the workforce full time as a 47yo. In a male dominated field where I did not have a lot of specific experience.
It’s a puzzle to me as well.
I agree with Amber’s assessment that it has a lot to do with the opportunities that were available forty or fifty years ago for women. Women simply haven’t been major players in most fields for long enough to acheive the status of grey-haired resident of the corner office. I expect (and hope) the ratio and culture will change as Gen X ages.
One thing I noticed as a student was similar – there are scads of old, stooped, grey-haired male college professors, but I have never had a female professor past her fifties. And I knew for a fact that, at my college, the female professors earned about 75¢ on the dollar. That just pleased the hell out of me.
Where’s that horse? I want to whack it a few more times.
OK going to wade in here with the impact of maternity leave on womens careers. I work in a management position in IT and am the only female I started work with to do so because I don’t have kids (for the record I’m 38). All my high performing, career focussed peers had kids and took time off then decided to come back to work part time. Right now in Australia in IT that’s pretty much career path stalled.
I know I work in a male dominated field anyway (at my present company only 20% of the workforce is female) but at some point we need to work out to combine work and family better for everyone.
Would love to talk with you about this offline…
They aren’t in the workforce, or they are in fields that were considered more accessible for women (teaching, nursing, exec assts, HR). We have more opportunities, but still a long way to go.
By the way, my mother was once turned down for a promotion because the male candidate “had a family to feed.” She’s an academic. I am fairly horrified at your BIL, I thought the 1970s were dead and buried.