Forbes ’The 50 Over 50’, is a list of women who have become successful and powerful after the age of 50, with some even in their nineties.

Why is it important to publish such a list?
Because one in two people in the world hold ageist views according to UN figures.
Because the older a woman becomes, the more she is devalued.

This deprecation and depreciation of women as we age, is also deeply entrenched in the English language.

Not every woman can realise the extraordinary success and achievements of many of the women in these Forbes lists. But they can recognise that the debasement of older women is based on lies. They can also recognise that this prejudice is destructive to them individually, and they can reject it.

There is a direct causal link between a woman’s age in Australia and her likelihood of becoming unemployed and homeless.
The Australian Government is to hold a Jobs and Skills Summit in September.
WomanGoingPlaces puts 4 Questions to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and key Ministers.

1. Why is this crisis that is engulfing Australian women aged 50+ not on the agenda of the Jobs & Skills Summit?
2. Will the Jobs and Skills Summit address the workforce experience of women aged 50+ and present programs to provide them with training where required?
3. Will the Government recognise at the Jobs and Skills Summit that the amount the Government pays in Jobseeker is a direct cause of the impoverishment of older women and will it immediately raise the rate?
4. Will the Government use the Jobs and Skills Summit to announce emergency changes to WorkForce Australia?

There is one election issue that has been universally ignored by the major parties and the independents in this election campaign. That is, the social crisis engulfing women aged 50+.

These women make up 30% of the female population in Australia, but they constitute the majority on Jobseeker, the majority of those who are locked out of the workforce by ageism and the majority of the homeless. There were over 400,000 older women already homeless or at risk of homelessness. Now, with the CPI at 5.1%, tens of thousands more will become homeless as they give up trying to survive on the obscenely inadequate amount of Jobseeker at $46 p.d. 

Recently, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg claimed that women were “ better off under the Coalition”. 
This is not true.
The LNP Government has presided over one of the worst social crises ever to unfold in Australia.

The final ignominy is that just as older women are invisible in society, so too are they invisible to the Federal Government of Australia. There is no acknowledgement that the economic insecurity and social exclusion of women aged 50+ is a rapidly escalating social crisis in Australia.

It’s a fairly innocuous sentence, but it reveals a completely different perception of women.

“There is a tendency when you are a 50-year-old (ish) woman, when you are given a mess, to say ‘just give it to me, I’ll fix it up’, “ said Dr. Monique Ryan, Voices of Kooyong candidate. She was speaking about the growing number of 50-ish women becoming independent candidates for the upcoming federal election.

It is the first time we have seen women of this age, as a group, leading the charge to transform Australian politics. These women are putting themselves forward in order to exercise the levers of power. This is at odds with the usual perception of 50-ish women.