Double Jeopardy
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Women who are now in their 50s and older have lived through a major paradigm shift in women's expected personal and professional roles. When they and the people in charge of the organisations where they work were children, they were imprinted with more negative perceptions of older women's vitality and professionalism, and not much has happened to counter those images.
So what do we make of this situation for older career women? Does the deck appear to be stacked against them in terms of both age and gender? Unfortunately, yes. But are the shifting demographics likely to create new opportunities for skilled women to be taken seriously? Yes again, by 2010 we'll have about 10 million more job openings than we have skilled and qualified people to fill them.
What Older Women Can Do
What should happen now? The best thing would be for women in their 40s, 50s and 60s to do a better job of reaching out and advising each other. Concerted outreach could enable more women to confront the negative imprinting which they and their male peers are probably carrying as well as encourage them to keep updating their skills so they'll be ready to take advantage of the upcoming demographic changes.
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