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Talking about older women – at last

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the sandwich generationThe idea is that this report will be a stimulus to further discussion and debate.

The Commission on Older Women, chaired by Labour’s Deputy Leader Harriet Harman MP QC and senior Labour figures including Yvette Cooper, Shadow Minister for Equalities, alongside a wide range of senior women from business, unions, voluntary organisations and pubic life, presented their interim report recently.

The report represents the views of the Commissioners and has been informed by roundtable discussions and submissions and recommendations will feed into the Labour party’s policy process.

The Commission, not surprisingly, found that there was a younger age profile for females working in TV than for men, both in front of the camera and behind the scenes.

It also found that unemployment among women aged between 50 and 64 had increased by 41 per cent in the last two-and-half years and that grandparents had no employment rights to support them in their nowadays vital role of providing care in their families.

The Commission’s consultation process will continue, but a number of ideas are already emerging around the key themes and the commission wanted to share these now, along with their interim recommendations.

The idea is that this report will be a stimulus to further discussion and debate.

The focus of the recommendations is on three main areas where reform is urgently needed – work, care and public life – but there are other policies which impact substantially on older women where their perspective has been overlooked, and in continuing work will the Commission hopes to address those.

The women who were spoken to are not sad victims, and many are enjoying their lives and are glad that they can still contribute to their family and their work, but for too long they have been taken for granted and not listened to.

The recommendations below are a to be start to changing that.

The interim report recommendations are:

1. The Commission believes that employers’ organisations should develop a national ‘Top 100 age-friendly employers’ scheme.

2. The Commission would like to see employment programmes funded by the Government demonstrating that they support older women. This could include active targeting and tailored support for older women.

3. The pay gap between men and women is wider for older women. So we want to see gender pay audits brought in, as set out in the 2010 Equality Act (Section 78).

4. Older women can face double discrimination – on the grounds of gender and of age.

The Equality Act already has provisions to tackle this but they have not yet been brought into effect. The Government should do this now.

5. The Commission would like to see much better careers service support for older workers.

6. The Commission believes that employers should provide full access to training opportunities to older women.

7. Employers should show flexibility to allow for changes to working patterns as women take on caring responsibilities or move towards retirement. Changes to working hours and job redesign should be offered.

8. The Commission believes that carers often do not know their rights and do not get proper support. We would like to see public bodies actively identifying carers to offer help.

9. Public policy needs to recognise the vital contribution to the economy that older women make as carers. So flexible employment and well designed jobs are important to enable them to balance work and care and deal with issues of financial hardship or the health and well – being of carers.

10. Short – term flexibility or ‘adjustment leave’ would help older women workers deal with immediate caring crises and allow time to adjust to a new caring role.

11. Thought should be given to the role of grandmothers who combine work and care for their grandchildren. The Commission would like to start a public debate on whether family leave could be shared with grandparents or whether this would set back the already low take-up by fathers.

12. Other countries deploy imaginative schemes to help relieve the pressures of caring. The Commission would like to see employers consulted about schemes such as the German ‘Familienpflegezeit’ family caring time system which allows employees to reduce hours temporarily while smoothing pay over a longer period.

13. Systems of mutual caring, such as time – banking, can support those caring for people who do not live near them. The Commission would like to start a debate about how these might work in the UK.

14. A national standard for information services for carers should be introduced.

This would greatly improve the access to information and support for older women carers.

15. The Commission believes that the broadcasting industry should establish a clear and consistent way of monitoring the number of older women they employ, including presenters and freelancers, across all broadcasting media, publish accurate data each year and develop targets.

16. The equality duty under the Equality Act applies to the BBC, and the Commission would like to see the BBC report annually on how it is being implemented in respect of older women.

17. Conferences supported with public funding should aim to have 50 per cent women speakers.

The Belfast Telegraph reported that, Yvette Cooper, speaking before the Labour Women’s Conference earlier this year, said, “Labour will be looking very carefully at the proposals in this report because the generation of women who’ve broken glass ceilings and paved the way for their daughters and granddaughters deserve a better deal.”

The Labour party are not only ones who have been looking at the issues ‘older women’ face recently.

On the grounds that debate about age discrimination has been largely silent about gender difference and older women are, in contrast to older men, often invisible – well, absent from the media, from public discourse and from policy initiatives – London’s Birbeck College held a panel discussion and debate on the subject.

Women do make up the majority of the older age groups in the UK.

But there are important differences among women over 65, differences that are evident in social, economic and political status, attitudes and behaviour. Being 65 is not the same as being 82, but women are clumped together as ‘older’, and that is that.

The Birbeck discussion reckoned that these differences raises a number of questions, among them ‘How do older women and men differ?’ ‘What are the differences among women?’ and ‘What, if anything, should government do about and for them?’ and ‘Why?’

Fiona MacTaggart MP, a member of The Labour Party’s Commission on Older Women, Dr Rosie Campbell, Professor Joni lovenduski and Jackie Ashley of The Guardian lead a public discussion of these issues.

To listen to it, click here.

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