Owning Your Value
5 minute read
I’m watching Love Island (again) this year. I only mention it because there’s one particular phrase on every Love Islander’s lips that’s really struck a chord with me. “You’ve got to back yourself” is something each of the contestants says on repeat, and with conviction. As midlife women, we don’t back ourselves enough, especially not in the context of our careers. In an interview with Forbes, Linda Lautenberg, the co-founder of Evolve Me, an organisation in the US that helps women over 40 to pivot professionally, explained that “women need to own their value before updating resumes and sending them out into the ether”.
We need to own our value. That’s a powerful sentiment, but an easier one to express than to embody. Yet it’s essential irrespective of whether we plan to pivot, stay put or re-enter the workforce after a hiatus. The reason this has hit home with me right now is because I’m having a website built and I’ve found it really challenging to ‘own my value’ and translate this onto the site. I can do it for the individuals and brands I work with though. I understand exactly where their value lies and how to help them connect with their community of customers, yet when I try to examine myself under the same lens, everything looks blurry.
It’s the contradiction of midlife. While we experience a stronger sense of self and purpose in so many regards, we’re still scourged by the age-old narrative around midlife that infers it’s an ending of sorts. And yes, some of these endings are real and necessary – fertility, a certain kind of youthfulness, childrearing for many – but plenty are not – fulfilment, adventure, joy, and career success. Yet dwindling numbers of women over 50 in the workforce suggest otherwise. Jane Devitt explored the issue brilliantly from her own perspective working in advertising in her recent piece Where are The Workplace Elders.
Professionally, midlife can feel a little like arriving at an unexpected T-junction. As much as you’d like to move forward, you keep hitting a dead end.
The obstacles to career progression over 40 are myriad, especially after a pandemic that affected female-dominated industries more than any others. A survey by The National Bureau of Economic Research, which analysed employment figures in 28 developed countries in North America and Europe, found that the economic damage caused by Covid was worse for women in almost every country analysed. There’s also the brutal findings of a study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2015, which revealed “robust evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women”.
The difficulty with owning our value in the workplace is that these spaces have always been defined by men and typically male characteristics. The Huffington Post described women over 40 as “The gold standard of employment” because “Over the years, they have amassed a treasure trove of workplace wisdom, as well as important soft skills like knowing how to get along with colleagues, problem-solving at work, and managing office politics.” Yet, this kind of emotional intelligence is often lacking in office environments. One former manager of mine had it in spades, and she brought the absolute best out in everybody she worked with while creating an atmosphere of harmony and achievement.
Mentoring programmes are a terrific way to help women in the workplace to own their value, because by paying it forward, they, and others, can observe the tangible dividends of midlifers’ wealth of experience and knowledge. It should be said, though, that the responsibility is not, and should not, rest only on the shoulders of us older women to recognise and utilise our skill sets. As Jane Devitt asked in her piece, what are companies doing to offset the exodus of women over 40 from the workplace who don’t feel fulfilled, respected or facilitated? It’s too easy to shove the burden of proof on women themselves, because even when we do own our own value, organisations can be impenetrable (like that T-junction) if they’re not poised to appreciate and welcome what older women can bring to the boardroom table.
An article in The Guardian last year made the intriguing point that the very reason women in midlife are sidelined and shoved out of their careers is in fact because they own their own value, refusing for the first time to conform to sexist standards in the workplace. The article explains: “By our mid 40s, confidence levels between the genders reach parity as women catch up and possess it in equal amounts to men. But this exhilarating shift for women – finally shorn of ingrained behaviours such as endless people-pleasing, acquiescence and self-deprecation – clashes with expectations and incurs penalties at work. That’s when we realise that gravitas and the wisdom of age are not welcome in female form.”
Perhaps this is why 62% of women business owners in the US are between 40 and 59 years old. They see the best option as breaking away from traditional workplaces, where, as The Guardian article put it, older women must settle for “diminishing scraps at the company table”.
Perhaps it’s why a meagre 13% of CEOs in Ireland are women, according to figures released by the CSO last year based on a survey of 700 companies around the country, each with more than 250 employees. Female representation among board chairpersons is minimally higher at just 14%.
The National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) wants a 40% legislative quota for gender balance on non-state boards. It’s an interesting proposition and you have to wonder what kind of change such a shift in the status quo would immediately effect on company policies and culture, and on how younger female employees would view their career progression. The concept of quotas always inspires robust debate, and whether you agree with them or not, NWCI leadership coordinator Emma DeSouza was right when she told The Journal: “The pace of change is too slow. The increases in female representation are extremely limited and marginal with risk of backsliding and regression”.
If there was this kind of gender balance in the workplace, I suspect the conversation around women owning their value would dissipate. Boardrooms would become emotionally neutral spaces where we could comfortably and confidently back ourselves and each other.
Marie Kelly, June 2022
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