As I spend more time reflecting on my own life course, I have come across some startling, and very grounding, realizations for older women that I want to take the opportunity to share. At the end, I will circle back to philanthropy and how we can build out a funding ecosystem to address the issues I discuss in this post, but let’s start first with synthesizing some of the existing knowledge about women’s life course. What happens when women age and are further removed from whatever positions of power they may have gained over their earlier lives and careers?
Men’s Power Consolidates While Women’s Power Diminishes in the Final Career Phase
For men, the research tells us that their earnings often peak in the period from age 40 to 60. Their leadership roles persist longer than women’s leadership roles. And society in general as well as workplace cultures allow their progression to be linear.
For women, earnings often stall or decline after their caregiving years, even though these earnings were generally less than men’s during the same life period. As women age past 40, their authority in the workplace becomes much more contingent — it is not presumed and must be re-earned at every turn. One way they must constantly re-earn their authority is through their voice being socially accepted and not seen as “angry” or “difficult.” While men age into bluntness and are widely accepted for their lack of tact in their later years, women of the same age are often punished for speaking their minds.
And yet, somehow, women are expected to rise above it all and reinvent themselves in the midst of this diminished support. Not a surprise, then, that rates of depression increase for some women as they hit their 50s and 60s, especially for women who are already disadvantaged by race, social class, or disability.
A Personal Anecdote to Illustrate the Problem
I remember, some years back, a local politician telling me he wasn’t going to run for higher office because he was in his mid-50s and “those are the highest earning years in a man’s life.” At the time, I was in my early 40’s and I remember thinking, “Oh, something to look forward to, my highest earning years are still to come.” But now I think, perhaps he literally meant “in a man’s life.” The relevance of his comments to my own life course as a woman were limited at best.
I say this to raise the red flag in the minds of all the 30-something and 40-something women who might be reading this post. Don’t be like me. Don’t make the mistake of thinking the promise of gender equality means your career arc will be similar to the men of your same age. It probably won’t be, and you would do well to start planning for this upcoming career asymmetry right here and now. Your work now is not to shrink. Your strategy will come from perceiving early on how your value strengthens the whole in your career, and finding ways to protect that wholeness with all your might.
What Society Loses By Sidelining Older Women
When society sidelines older women in the workforce, it loses care-oriented judgement and continuity, ethical memory, and social cohesion — the very capacities complex systems need most to sustain themselves over the long haul.
This is not about “giving older women a chance.” It’s about society choosing short-term optics over long-term resilience.
The Judgement and Continuity Piece
Older women tend to excel at pattern recognition. This means they can use their institutional and/or personal memory to track back to when something similar happened before, and inform the group as to the potential consequences of going down that wrong road again. It makes them better at teasing out social and ethical risks, distinguishing the real problems from the noise and confusion, and knowing when to take action versus when to proceed with patience and vigilance.
When older women are sidelined from the workforce, organizations tend to proceed with less wisdom. The functioning of the system may get faster and louder, but it also becomes less capable of fulfilling its mission.
And perhaps in the cruelest irony of all, when older women are forced to exit the workplace, the leadership pipeline thins. Power consolidates again to the male, and the next generation of women coming up has to start all over again.
What Philanthropy Is Doing for Older Women in the Workforce
Organizations like the AARP Foundation help older adults (including women) build skills and retrain to stay relevant to the workforce. Beyond that, a scant few private foundation specifically target helping older women in the workforce. For example, the Peggy and Jack Baskin Foundation supports programs helping women (including those 40+) re-enter work with career guidance, confidence building, and tech skills.
But overall, there is very little focus in philanthropy on investing in older women’s workforce participation. So what could philanthropy do?
1. Fund Age and Gender-Targeted Workforce Programs
Most workforce programs are broad and not designed with women who are dealing with both sexism and ageism. Funders could support programs that explicitly go beyond generic job training to address structural barriers. These programs could be tailored to recruit and train older women for leadership, advisory, and consulting roles.
2. Support Anti-Ageism and Workplace Inclusion Initiatives
Philanthropy could invest in employer education campaigns about the negative impacts of ageism and gender bias. They could help employers learn about how to practice inclusive hiring for older women, and partner with these employers to ensure that they create workplaces that cultivate the career paths for women through the final stages of their careers. The Center for American Progress has more to say about this in their report, “Promoting Economic Advancement for Older Women in the Workforce.”
3. Fund Care Infrastructure and Economic Security
Because older women often carry unpaid caregiving responsibilities that disrupt careers, funders could help by supporting care infrastructure (childcare, elder care) that reduces the career penalties associated with caregiving. Initiatives like the CARE Fund (focused on care infrastructure) already point toward how philanthropy can transform systems that disproportionately impact women.
4. Invest in Mentorships, Fellowships, Peer Networks
Older women with career experience are powerful resources for younger and mid-career women, yet philanthropic investments in mentorship networks are underdeveloped. Instead of sidelining women’s knowledge and experience, funding could support:
- Structured intergenerational mentoring programs
- Networks connecting older women into advisory boards, nonprofit leadership, private sector leadership programs, and startup mentorship
- Fellowships, residencies, and part-time leadership programs for older women
5. Support Research and Data on Ageism Combined with Gender Bias in Work
Philanthropy can fill knowledge gaps by funding more and better research on older women in the workforce. We still barely know what we’re talking about when we talk about this problem, and so funders could step in and create that data that could help employers and policymakers design effective solutions. Without data, the problem remains invisible to decision-makers.
Bibliography
Ageism & Workplace Discrimination
- Becker, T. (2022). Age Discrimination, One Source of Inequality. National Academies Press / NCBI.
↳ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK588538/ NCBI - Francioli, S. P. (2021). The Older Worker: Gender and Age Discrimination in the Workplace. ScienceDirect.
↳ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780128160947000131 ScienceDirect - McLaughlin, J. S., & Neumark, D. (2022). Gendered Ageism and Dis/ability and Employment of Older Workers. NBER Working Paper 30355.
↳ http://www.nber.org/papers/w30355.pdf NBER - Kunze, F. (2024). Review: Discrimination in organizations on the basis of age. ScienceDirect.
↳ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X24001404 ScienceDirect - Issue Brief #11: Ageism in Employment (2025). WUSTL Center for Aging.
↳ https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/context/centerforaging/article/1002/viewcontent/FINAL_Issue_brief__11__2025__Ageism_in_employment.pdf Open Scholarship
Gendered Ageism & Older Women
- Jyrkinen, M., & McKie, L. (2025). Gendered Ageism: Older Women’s Experiences of Employment Agency Practices. ResearchGate.
↳ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249633204_Gendered_Ageism_Older_Women%27s_Experiences_of_Employment_Agency_Practices ResearchGate - Browne, C. V. et al. (2022). Global Gender Inequality, Older Women, and the Call for Inclusive Labor Markets. PMC.
↳ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9638432/ PMC - Loy-Ashe, T. (2024). Assessing the Prevalence of Gendered Ageism Among Older Adults. Journal of Long-Term Care.
↳ https://journal.ilpnetwork.org/articles/10.31389/jltc.157 Journal of Long-Term Care - Older Women’s Lived Experiences of Gendered Ageism. HelpAge International report.
↳ https://www.helpage.org/silo/files/older-womens-lived-experiences-of-gendered-ageism.pdf HelpAge International - Handy, J., & Davy, D. (2007). Older Women’s Experiences of Employment Agency Practices.
↳ Ovid article (journal subscription required) Ovid
Social Perceptions of Aging & Gender
- Kornadt, A. E. et al. (2013). Gender-Specific Age Stereotypes in Different Life Domains. PMC.
↳ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5549213/ PMC - Double Standard of Aging. (Wikipedia overview summarizing research on how aging is judged differently by gender.
↳ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_standard_of_aging Wikipedia
Contemporary Commentary & Reports
- Women Face Workplace Ageism at All Ages. EEOC-related analysis.
↳ https://www.eeoc.net/blog/2023/july/women-face-workplace-ageism-at-all-ages/ Shellist Lazarz Slobin LLP - Corbett, H. (2024). Ageism May Be Holding Younger Women Back From Advancing at Work. Forbes.
↳ https://www.forbes.com/sites/hollycorbett/2024/09/30/ageism-may-be-holding-younger-women-back-from-advancing-at-work/ Forbes
Broader Context / Sociological Background
- Glass Escalator (Williams, 1992) — Sociological concept about differential career mobility for men vs. women across professions.
↳ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_escalator Wikipedia - Rosalind Barnett (psychologist) — Work on gender, aging, and the labor force (background on midlife work issues).
↳ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Barnett Wikipedia - Barbara Reskin (sociologist) — Work on labor market stratification and workplace inequality that informs gendered career trajectories.
↳ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Reskin Wikipedia
What a thoughtful and thorough essay, well-articulated. Thank you, Kiersten, for shining light on this neglected issue—and presenting a path forward, as well. Is anyone paying heed?
One can only hope that people in decision-making roles for our society are listening. I know we have many of those people on our mailing list.