The Queenager: Eleanor's Letter (May 12th 2024)

Dear Queenagers

Well I’ve been racing around this week – including spending two nights up in Manchester. Now I’ll be honest (sorry Northerners) until now, every time I’ve been up to Manchester to see my daughter, who is at Uni there, it has been wet, bleak and somewhat unprepocessing. Yes, I haven’t loved it. But this time all that changed. It was as if the city was an oyster, rough and dark and gnarly on the outside and this time – in the sunshine hanging out in Whitworth Park which looked like Paris in an Impressionist painting -Manchester finally showed me its pearly centre. The people are so fun and friendly and dressed to the nines, Gay village on the canal was eye-popping (an actual naked hairy bottom outside a bar at 9pm at night) and I had the best spaghetti vongole I’ve ever eaten (other than in Naples) at a fab restaurant in the Northern Quarter called Sicilian NQ. I was definitely the oldest swinger in town; the average age is about 23. But I decided just to pretend I was 20 again (and I was honoured to be allowed to hang out all afternoon in the park with my daughter’s lovely friends) and I had a great time being “Mumsy” in the sunshine . So finally I get it: Manchester rocks.

En route to Manchester (where I was moderating an evening for BT about authentic leadership) I attended the Chartered Management Institute’s Women’s Conference in Houndsditch in the City of London. The CMI is run by my dear old friend and comrade in the struggle to get more gender balance at the top of business, the brilliant Queenager Ann Francke. She had assembled quite the gathering; we were addressed by Angela Rayner, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, all red hair and fiery Mancunian passion and bonhomie, launching a scheme to protect young women from sexual harassment when they were interns and talking about the deep barriers which still stop women progressing at work. It was the first time I’ve seen her in action up close and personal and she was phenomenal; funny, sharp, real, passionate. I can see why the Tories are so scared of her (and if you think I am wrong, then just look at how Ex Tory Chancellor Nadim Zahari somehow managed to evade £5million in tax but the Tory press think that is fine, while they are hounding Angela over about £10k of capital gains tax which arguably she didn’t even need to pay. As I am hitting send on this I can see she is about to be interviewed about it under caution.) But I digress. After Angela, another great Queenager turned up at the CMI, the Duchess of Edinburgh, fresh from her brave trip to Ukraine. She watched the panel I was on which was all about unlocking Purpose and why it matters. I talked about how my purpose is to change the narrative society tells about older women to something more positive and fit for purpose: how Queenagers are in their prime. How we want all young women not to dread getting older but to look forward to being 50 plus as when it all comes together, when we finally become the women we always wanted to be. The Duchess was grinning at me all the way through it – as was the room which was full of powerful businesses Queenagers. I’m beginning to think we might be getting somewhere!

Anneliese Dodds MP – and Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities – was also on my panel and afterwards we headed to the Ops Room of the conference for an hour and fifteen minutes of one-on-one interview. I wrote it up for the Telegraph yesterday – you can read that version here. But she and I discussed Queenagers at much greater length than appeared in the paper, as it is somewhat of a shared passion. So I am giving you a whole load of our extra conversation here. And wow, was it music to my ears!

I first met Anneliese when she was on a panel I chaired about Queenagers at the Women of the World festival last year. At that time she was about to head off round the UK on a listening exercise with women in their 40s, 50s and 60s. As an economist she was interested in why so many Queenagers had fallen out of the work force during the pandemic (about 185,000 left either because they were whacked or had had enough). At the centre of her brief if Labour win the election will be removing barriers to opportunity and widening access to the talent businesses need to “face up to arguably the UK’s biggest challenge – our low levels of economic growth.” (If you are interested in reading about her ideas then she has just written a pamphlet called Equal Footing for the Fawcett society ). But she has her eyes firmly on the potential of midlife women.

She began making her case for keeping Queenagers in the workforce by citing a UN women report which shows “how all OECD countries could boost their GDP by over $6 trillion if they all matched Sweden’s high female employment rate”; adding that “rich countries are losing some 15% of potential GCP due to women’s under employment.”

This is where Queenagers come in. “The UK Labour market is particularly interesting in this regard as labour market participation by women between 50 and 64 has actually gone down in recent years; an estimated £7 billion of additional economic output could be released to the UK economy if the 157,00 women in this cohort who have left work returned to the labour market.” She says about 23,000 of them (that makes it up to 180,000) are currently waiting for treatment on NHS waiting lists, something else she wants to fix. (Apparently the waiting list for gynaecological problems is the longest of all of them with 600,000 women needing treatment. It is depressing that women’s health is always at the bottom of the pile, another thing she wants to change! And the intersectionality of women’s health with BAME women and thosein the poorest parts of the UK half as likely to get HRT as those in the richest is another massive disgrace).

Anyway, getting these Queenagers back into harness, or indeed getting companies to keep them on rather than making them redundant as they hit 50 (yes that happened to me, you can read my story here on NOON) is one of her (quiet) passions. “About a year ago, I launched what I called a conversation with women in the 40s 50s and 60s about the issues they are facing in the workplace. They are facing so many different kinds of pressures, from being sandwich carers – there are half a million women in that situation – and their health-care issues with about a fifth of of these midlife women who have left the Labour market being on NHS waiting lists…”

Research from noon.org.uk finds that by 50 over half of women have been through at least five massive life events – divorce, bereavement, redundancy, dealing with elderly parents and caring for young people with mental health issues,abuse, bankruptcy, their own health problems, menopause and that often all of these hit at once in a “midlife collision”. This goes way beyond menopause, that is just one of the issues hitting women at this point. Indeed Dodds agrees with me that the focus on menopause to the exclusion of everything else can be detrimental. “Women don’t want to be medicalized around menopause because it’s often been used against us, like pregnancy.” Yup – we want doctors to know how to treat our symptoms and employers not to sack us but we don’t want to be seen through a menopausal lens. We are Queenagers not walking hot flushes!

Dodds, MP for East Oxford (she took a first at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, in PPE and worked as an academic before becoming an MEP and then an MP) has been exploring these issues all over the UK. “In the WI, at crafting sessions in Wellingborough, at a Woman’s Centre in Derby, trying to have conversations with women fitting into that category to understand what needs to change. Women in that age group don’t expect to be given anything on a plate. We are not patronising them. But there are changes that government can make in particular, that would make a big difference that would make life easier.” Most critical she says is flexibility. She is right, our NOON research shows that flexibility is 16 times more important to Queenagers than status.

“It is these midlife women who are taking responsibility, trying to face all these challenges at the same time, doing an amazing job but with those competing pressures which are not being recognised by anyone, particularly not government. So their needs have fed directly into how we can hit the ground running with the measures we outline in our New Deal for workers. We’re now at the stage of focusing on implementation. We said that we want to publish draft legislation within 100 days of being elected. This is key to the economy and retention of midlife women in the labour market. There is a clear economic argument for this as well as a moral and ethical one.”

I discussed with Dodds how our Queenager generation of women are pioneers – the tip of the spear which has pushed for employment changes from maternity pay to the right to flexible working. We are the first cohort of women to have worked all the way through our lives in such numbers (we were the first generation of professional women to join the workforce in the same numbers as men in the late 80s and early 90s) and to be hitting these midlife pinchpoints while still in employment. We discussed how there is a yawning, scary gap in provision for women in their old age. So many women are falling out of the labour force at 50 – hit by the midlife collision, gendered ageism and what we call at NOON ‘the Revolt’ (that sense of not having all the time in the world left and wanting to use it well). The problem is there are 18 long years between 50 and the state pension age of 68 (which is likely to rise by the time we get there). Women already have smaller pension pots than men – the Gender Pension Gap is a wopping 35% and women live longer. So no wonder a clever Queenager economist like Dodds (46) has realised it is essential for us to stay in work; otherwise we will see millions of older women in poverty as they age and by staying in work we can add huge value.

I asked her why she thinks this cohort of midlife women have been ignored for so long but are now creeping up the agenda? “Because finally we are seeing some women of this age coming into those much more senior roles in business, in media and in politics. That is creating a strong push now for change. It’s personal. ” She points to all the Queenagers in powerful positions in the Labour party: “I’m working with Rachel Reeves [45] the Shadow Chancellor and Tulip Siddiq [41] on financial services issues, Liz Kendall [52] on Work and Pensions. Did you know that the gender pay gap is for women in their 50s and 60s is nearly four times worse than for women in their 30s?” Gendered ageism is real. She nods. “It’s finally now receiving the focus that’s required, at the level of debate and discussion. But we would say it’s not receiving the focus that is needed when it comes to practical policy and implementation. And of course the reduced economic output is massive but it’s even broader than that. These women are the role models, they’re the ones who would be providing the support to younger colleagues. They’re the ones who understand, you know, what has been tried before in organisations and has worked and what hasn’t worked. They’re the ones who have built up those networks of others in their business and in their industry. And of course, they’ve also often got many skills from bringing up children as well. And caring and in other ways, and juggling all of those pressures, which requires a lot of skills to to manage. So they’re at the top of their game, and the reduced productivity growth, because of those women moving out of the labour market, is a really significant problem.”

Dear Queenagers, I could have cheered to hear her lay out so eloquently the case we are making at NOON. I’m happy to say that while politicians are only starting to act, increasing numbers of businesses are getting the message. We are currently running Noon Queenager Circles in a number of big corporates and have a Corporate Queenager programme to help retention of Queenagers. Looking at the data in one of the companies where we are working we discovered that in terms of female employees aged 40-45, they have about 30%, 45-50 it’s 28%, when we get to 50-55 it suddenly plummets to 18%. That is what we are helping to fix. To boost retention, we are using our NOON research insights and what we know from all of you lovely Queenagers and our own circles to help midlife women through the pinchpoints of midlife so they can hang onto their jobs (and their employers can make them feel more valued and visible and give them what they need). If you are interested in knowing more about this do email jackie@inherspace.co.uk. We run this with the brilliant Lucy Ryan author of Revolting Women – Why Midlife Women are Walking Out and What you can Do about it, who is our Head of Noon Consulting. Do get in touch.

Anyway – the sun is shining and the pond beckons, not to mention the Arsenal at 4pm. I hope you’ve enjoyed this – I am so buoyed up by Dodds’ insights and am so grateful to her for sharing them with me.

Don’t forget that we’ll be discussing how to have better relationships with psychologist and ex journalist Lucy Cavendish (read her piece for NOON here) on 14th May online at 7pm –click here for tickets, free for our Paid Subscribers.

And May 20th is our big NOON Regional Circle kick off. Again these are free for paid Subscribers (a bargain at only £6 a month). Click one of these links to join in your area: groups in Yorkshire, Kent, Bristol, Devon, Surrey and Cheltenham and London of course.

And not forgetting you lovely Queenagers who are abroad or stuck at home with caring duties, we’ve got an online circle, just me and all of you, on Wednesday May 29th 6pm GMT (which is just after the big retreat so I will be sharing all the news and insights). I’ll be sending a zoom link for that nearer the time. But save the date.

Much love and hope to see you all soon. And if you’d really like to support me and my work please consider pre-ordering my book Much More to Come published by HarperCollins which is out on August 1st (if you pre-order you won’t have to pay till August and if we can get 1000 pre-orders we’ve got a shot at making the bestseller list and fuelling our Queenager crusade).

xxxx

Eleanor

By Eleanor Mills