Ageless Ambition: Celebrating the Resilience and Strength of Older Women on International Women's Day
Every year on March 8, we celebrate International Women’s Day. This year’s theme #EmbraceEquity has so many iterations of importance. All women deserve to be both embraced and treated equally. All women—regardless of age, race, education, career, or ability—deserve to be celebrated.
Let’s talk about what society expects of women, and how that equity is being experienced by women as they age. Join us in exploring the ways ageism affects women's lives and why we must work together to break down these barriers and create real, lasting change for all women.
Before you begin, remember that our professionals are always here to help
What does it mean to embrace equity?
In order to dive in more specifically to the barriers women face across their lifespan, let’s talk more generally about embracing equity. In a literal sense, we thought definitions could be a great place to begin in how we think about the role of both of these words in our lives.
Embrace is a verb1: the action of accepting, including or holding something (or someone!) with enthusiasm.
Equity is noun2: it can refer to equal treatment of people or the equal parts or shares of value in something (typically property or money, but we can think more abstractly).
When we think about those definitions in the context of the lives of women, there are many ways that barriers may arise in how we experience equity, or how the world embraces our right to it.
Some barriers to equity are
Age or life stage
Race or ethnicity
Culture
Language
Sexuality and relationship structure
Having a disability
Gender identity
Religion
Level of education
While all of each of these barriers has a unique impact, we want to turn our focus toward the barrier of ageism. Women have value at any age and we rebel against the idea that anyone has the right to make us feel otherwise. It’s our goal to make a statement, today and every day, about the difference a woman can make at any point in her life.
What is ageism and how does it impact women?
For herself, her loved ones and the world beyond her immediate circle, a woman should be celebrated for whom and where she is in life. Unfortunately, society hasn’t created an inclusive and celebratory space for women to live their lives at any age.
Ageism is the discrimination against someone due to how old they are or appear to be and it’s happening to women at disproportionate rates. It’s casually dropped into conversation about how wives should be “traded in for newer models”, we build additions to our homes and call them mother-in-law suites—what does this say about how we perceive the women of distinction among us?
The impact of ageism spans women from a very young age and affects them in many ways. From how they access healthcare to when they ask for support for their struggles, women feel the clock ticking around their worth in every aspect of their lives. A woman may
Our culture isn’t kind to women as they age
Women over 50 are often portrayed in shows where the storylines center around their feelings of invisibility, loss of support, and sense of drifting without purpose. Most recently, Grace and Frankie has seen wild success but the foundation of this concept is the Golden Girls, still revered decades after the show’s final season ran.
But even with these messages ringing true and being streamed in millions of homes and lives, women continue to be devalued. They are shelved, discarded, and pushed into the corners of the lives they’ve built with their entire selves.
And it isn’t getting better.
Indeed, the age of usefulness seems to be ever increasing and dropping, somehow. In many arenas, an aging woman can be as young as 35 but is most often thought of around age 40. It creates a carousel of impossibility in our lives.
Aging potential
We as women are expected to do more sooner but also wait longer to reach our potential. It’s implied that we should be mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters before we are people but we also shouldn’t waste our potential on these things before we’re ready. We give up our prime to our families and we’re told we don’t deserve careers (we’re too old now), but if we don’t follow that process, we’re too old to have families.
Women cannot win when the world is hellbent on telling her she is either not old enough or too old. There is no sweet spot in the middle where a woman’s right to just be is embraced—where she receives equity for her existence without fighting for her space to simply exist.
Women, worth, and the wisdom of age
When you think about it like that, it makes sense why women fear switching careers later in their lives, and why they fear taking time off to care for their health. Women over 40 already make substantially less money than their male counterparts in the office—why would they put more barriers up to their ever-diminishing value?
Women over the age of 40 are more likely to experience complicated emotional experiences as their hormones create a physiological change in their bodies and menopause begins. They’re leaving the age of childbearing and in many ways, this is a loss for women.
Aging can make a woman feel the changing season of their bodies innately, and society ensures it holds a mirror up to magnify it. It can make it difficult to recognize what’s happening when it’s time to reach out for support, and women may go without mental health treatment which can make them feel more alone.
But none of these things negate the need for community, celebration and validation. No matter what society, culture, family or careers seem to believe, there is more to life beyond the first 40 years. Women deserve equity at every age, and should be encouraged and supported to access a life they can embrace.
We are incredible beings—we overcome adversity and complexity. We move mountains and conquer change within and beyond ourselves. We wear our wisdom like a crown as we guide our own lives and the lives of our loved ones. We have no prime—we are simply a prism and when we embrace our possibility and we are met with equity, we shine so brightly.
We are women, and we contain multitudes at any age.
If you are looking for mental health support from a licensed therapist online that specializes in support women across the lifespan, Luna Joy is looking for you too. Reach out today and let’s start something new.
