Financial issues
Older women working longer are affected by low pay and poor career prospects. The lack of respect that women and older workers get in the workplace means it is difficult to progress out of low paid or part time work, having a scarring effect on wages.
Being a part-time worker increases the probability of being low paid for a longer time. There are 3 times more women aged 50-64 working part-time than men: that’s 1.98 million women.
The gender pay gap is many times higher for older women workers that it is for younger women. Women over 50 working full-time earn a shocking 12.8% less per hour than men over 50.
We are facing a long-term unemployment crisis for older workers. 2.7 Million Workers aged 50 or over have been furloughed. This means that 400,000 in this age group are at risk of redundancy.
Professional esteem and training issues
While many of us have moved our lives online, there are 4 million people over the age of 65 in the UK who have never used the internet and have not been able to chat to family and friends during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Women who have been shielding because of underlining health issues have gone days without speaking to anyone and have been left feeling unloved, unwanted and forgotten. For the first time in their lives they have experienced loneliness and their lives have changed in so many ways.
Inside the workplace, digital skills are essential too – many women could be missing out on jobs because they haven’t been given the opportunity to learn. Workers over 50 are the least likely to be offered off-the-job training.
The TUC's Unionlearn project has been delivering great digital training to workers of all ages - but the government has withdrawn funding from the Union Learning Fund which will have dramatic impact on union learning.
Luckily, the GMB offers lots of learning opportunities to members – including entry level digital skills courses from Wranx.
Let's continue our fight
It is very difficult to comprehend that women are still experiencing all of these horrendous attitudes in the workplace. Sexism, ageism - older women experience this on a regular basis at work. We need to educate and raise awareness enabling us to help to stamp out these awful acts once and for all – to make work so much easier for older women who are constantly on the receiving end of cruel jibes.
Many of us know of shocking examples in the workplace. We need to work to influence employers to ensure that training opportunities are available to all. We need to make sure that older women are not discouraged or denied the opportunity to develop their skills.
We demand respect and dignity in our working lives, and we will campaign until we achieve this.
We may have to move mountains and we will. We are strong minded older women.
We will continue with our fight for equality to help our generations of women in the future.
We need better policy in the workplace so our daughters and granddaughters will read this in our history books and rest assured that this is the past way of working life and not the future!
Margaret (Margi) Clarke has been a GMB member for over 30 years. She sits on the GMB Central Executive Council, National Equalities Forum, National Retired Members Committee and Birmingham and West Midlands Regional Committee and Regional Council. Margi is a member of the Labour Party National Constitutional Committee.
Sources: ONS, 2019 and 2020; Centre for Ageing Better
