It is possible to take the same facts in use here and come to an entirely different conclusion:
This may be bound up with hormonal changes, but is certainly connected with another shift, as one woman told me: “You get to your 50s, the male gaze is no longer turned on you and you realise how awful it was to live under it, how liberating to be free of it.” Not having to deal with, factor in, accommodate and tiptoe around this omnipresent, objectifying force releases a windfall of energy – along with legitimate anger over the huge efforts expended to date.
Hmm, fertile women are looked at – to use one possible verb – differently from past-fertile women. OK. Think we can grasp that in our sexually dimorphic species.
Perhaps you have heard about the mysterious case of the disappearing older woman, who almost overnight seems to vanish from the workplace, the media landscape and society’s line of vision. As others have chronicled, women over 40 face a sucker punch of ageism wrapped in sexism: as our youth recedes, our currency crashes.
Hmm, well, could be.
The conclusion drawn here in The Guardian is that we’re all being grossly unfair to those post-fertile women.
It being, as I say, entirely possible to take these same facts and come to a different conclusion. We’re all being grossly unfair to fertile women. That regard that the post-fertile get is just the same as the regard that all men all the time get. The problem therefore being not the depths to which the post-menopausal are cast but the pedestals the pre- are placed upon.
To test this we’d need to look at how young women are treated as against young men. For example, does a nice piece of eye candy get a job doing the weather in a manner that a young man does not? Umm, yes, maybe.
So, older ladies, welcome to our world……..
I do agree with you Tim. I naturally regard beautiful young ladies quite differently to___er shall I say the elderly.
Must admit that most of the elderly take it in their stride. They are not, thank God, all a pack of whingers like Guardian columnists.
Aye, once again a Guardian columnist is outraged at some aspect of the human condition! Attention from the opposite sex is degrading? To suddenly be without it is liberating? That’s certainly one side of the coin…
One of the reasons for the decline of women in software is that companies used to select people who passed an aptitude test or had A levels, male or female, regardless of any software experience (because to be fair, most people didn’t have computers in the mid-80s). A lot of young attractive women got away with being in the job for years and crap at the job, because they didn’t particularly apply themselves to learning to do it, and men would jump out of their chairs to help them and fix their broken code, like they wouldn’t do for other… Read more »
If you’re a woman working in a field where looks are really important (actress, stripper, etc.) advancing age can be a problem. But if you’re an accountant or lawyer, not so much.
Nancy and Jane seem to be doing all right.
Was it also awful to live under the male providing the money, the house, food, a home and security for the children?
And are middle aged men also liberated from the gaze of women who eye them up for their prospects?
I think we can agree the equal pay problem (for the same job) for workers under 40 has been solved. Any gender imbalance in productivity is likely down to the ‘mother’ factor, having to cover caring responsibilities. And it’s true that once in their 40s most of the women I’ve worked with seem to hit their stride and push on. At that age, however, it’s either onwards and upwards – into the finite number of senior management posts (the cliff edge), or risk being replaced in your basic day-to-day role by a younger (cheaper) version of yourself. It’s why the… Read more »
The Guardian hires columnists who are offended by everything and simply get no pleasure out of life. There’s probably something discriminatory about their hiring practices.
offence is the business model of the Left.
If woke reportage gets more clicks than the sober stuff, that’s the way to go.
Fertile women usually advertise their fertility (make up, cleavage, tight clothing, etc. etc.), Quite normally they want to attract a mate, one wishes them every success. Non fertile women, for instance my grandmother, quite normally bake cakes, look after the grandchildren and more importantly provide a wise outlook based on their long lived experience. Of course young men, with or without a wise grandmother, are disadvantaged compared to young women, this is so obvious that it should not need stating, pert breasts and buttocks delight and entice, as they should and this obviously works against youthful men. But so be… Read more »
At the age of 83 I find that all the attractive young women I see,ignore me and concentrate on the men of their own age.I feel this is hurtful and ageist. Who do I complain to ?
Your complaint will be ignored! Just when we are rich enough, wise enough, experienced enough to be the perfect life partner for a female of ANY age, the almighty decides to riddle our bodies with all kinds of frailties and failures, each and all wholly unappealing to said females of any age. Another absolute proof of the infinite malignity of whichever god people worship.
whine for yourself Howard. I have noticed the opposite. Suddenly after a lifetime of being mostly ignored by females I am now a defacto grandpa, confidant and companion of women of many ages. I have no idea how or why this happened. Still feels odd.
BTW, maybe its my area and interests, but in NSW emergency services volunteer area older women are moving into leadership positions and doing it very well. As one said to me, “Once you have raised a family, you know how to manage people”. Perhaps Guardian writers live in a small bubble ?
Their version of raising a family means changing their children’s genders, drugging them to the eyeballs and removing their genitalia. Not a good recommendation for management.
In my bitter experience, that’s exactly what modern HR Jacintas try. To men anyway. Comments from associates in various careers suggest this is a common experience.
I’m unclear why any woman worth her salt gives a flying fornication about what men are doing or not doing?