🦕 Are you over 50? Are you a woman? Then you have a problem! 😪
It’s bad enough that women often don’t get equal pay and are massively under-represented in senior leadership roles. But now, post Covid, women over 50 have been forced into early retirement, targeted for redundancy as firms reduce headcount.
Women over 50 are losing out
Post Covid, older women are the hardest hit when it comes to getting back into the workplace or saving for pensions. Stuart Lewis, founder of Rest Less recruitment firm, says the lack of work, combined with a pensions gap, now means that women over 50 are “in a financially precarious position ahead of retirement”.
Over 50, female and drowning in discrimination
Lewis believes that age discrimination – particularly for women – has always been “rife, prior to the pandemic and is only set to increase in the wake of the crisis”. His research confirms that “In the wake of the toughest job market in decades, there has been a significant rise in the number of workers over 50 who have lost hope in finding a job and feel forced into an early retirement that many simply cannot afford.”
Women over 50 are valuable assets to any workforce
Organisations are missing the gold-dust inside their workforces, if they ignore the potential and value of women over 50. Here’s a reminder of what you’ll get if you’re smart enough to employ these brilliant workers:
- A great work ethic (they’re less distractible and more focused)
- Fewer absences (younger people take twice as much time off sick)
- Higher emotional intelligence, more experience and greater resilience
- Advanced abilities to deal with transitions (they’re jugglers; everything from kids to back to work, to running the home yet holding down a full-time job)
Women over 50 are often ignored, over-looked and under-appreciated. Yet, they’re a treasure trove of knowledge, skills and ability. What company wouldn’t want that?
Reading in the Telegraph: Amy Jones says women over 50 are hardest hit when it comes to getting work & saving for pensions.
