A while back I had an idea I was genuinely excited about – good, well-formed, exactly the kind of thing I know about after many years in my work game. I put it forward. They loved it. “Yup, we must do it”, they enthused.
After a while, nothing came back. Not a no, just silence, which if you’ve worked long enough in any creative industry you learn to read as its own kind of answer. Anyway, months later, a version of it appeared anyway. Different names attached. Same essential idea, dressed up in slightly different clothes.
This isn’t a piece about being wronged – nobody owes me anything because I’ve been doing my stuff a long time – but that moment (and its cousins) told me something about having the ideas but then getting them implemented by a, did I say younger, model.
That got me thinking yet again about age bias which is real and not so subtle once you know what you’re looking at. I also remember when I was with a group of younger colleagues talking about our upcoming coverage of a huge event, one of which I had intimate knowledge. Instead of staring at me like I was an idiot – which I would have preferred – they just talked over everything I tried to suggest and to say.
It’s like they’d clocked how long I’d been doing what I do and looked at me – not in an admiring way – but in more a kind of oh way.
I’m hardly alone in clocking this, and it’s no coincidence it’s overwhelmingly women telling this story right now. Look at what happened when Stacey Duguid, 52, a former editor at British ELLE magazine who is now unemployable, apparently, by every recruiter in Britain. Sixteen months of applications, from six-figure brand director roles to warehouse photography gigs, met with near-total silence. She’s now on unemployment benefits.
“People say that trite thing of, ‘Well, just get a job in Tesco (supermarket) stacking shelves.’ You try getting a job in Tesco stacking shelves. Good luck to you,” she says.
Stacey has turned her plight into a petition – a platform called The Encore which is a push to get government regulation of the AI tools quietly screening women out before a human ever opens the file.
It’s the same instinct behind the Australian platform Fifty and Fearless, the podcast and community built by Kylie Jones after her own reckoning at 50; with over one million women now turning to something built specifically for them because they were excluded from the mainstream conversation.
Here’s what might surprise you: I’m not writing this from underneath a hurt bubble as the majority of work-people I deal with are lovely and curious about what I might know and can do. Unfortunately “we value your experience” and “here’s a paid gig” are two separate sentences, and these days the second comes around a lot less than the first.
Being technologically savvy gets similar ageist treatment with the tired assumption that over-50s haven’t kept up and that AI is a young person’s toy. Ha! The amount of “matures” who have actually studied it – like me – is vast, so don’t come at us with that “but you wouldn’t understand” trope.
But here’s the actual truer story: none of this has left me standing still and if anything, having to hustle and stay relevant is what’s kept me sharp and going.
Let’s face it, only a few industries “commission” bigger picture ideas from older peeps although how good is it to see the brilliant reaction to new TV series Dalliance with Georgie Parker and Heather Mitchell (it has The Secret Life Of Us vibe – but with wisdom, lines and not in a share house.)
I reckon getting older in the workforce is actually about noticing gaps and filling them before anyone gives you permission to – so is it any wonder I instigated a local trivia night?
You see, it’s not resilience that I’m most proud of in my work self but a habit of reinvention. Stopping waiting to be picked and deciding what you can make happen is a huge part of ageing great-fully.
That may not sound particularly romantic, and I won’t pretend it is, but having paid for the roof over my head myself and with no “other half” splitting the bills or an inheritance waiting, this reinvention thing isn’t some kooky lifestyle choice for me. It’s how I will keep my own lights on.
And as frustrating as it is the part that surprises me each day is that I wouldn’t trade it.
I’m not going to tell you work ageism is getting better because it isn’t. What I’ll say is that it’s teaching me to keep moving sideways when the door in front of me won’t open and that sideways move often turns out to be a very interesting one.
Melissa Hoyer is a social commentator and writer.
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