GREY MATTERS
Put smart listen down up. phone Ageing your and activists are a powerful force behind societal change, and they can teach you a thing or two
“Now you’ve pissed off grandma” read the handpainted sign belonging to a Pussyhatted, grey-parka’d septuagenarian marching on Washington last year. One of five million campaigners who turned up worldwide for the inaugural Women’s March, she typified the older woman activist: informed, educated, engaged, motivated, angry and on Instagram. “Still fighting at 100” other placards read, and, “Ninety, nasty and not giving up”.
“We are challenging the ‘decline narrative’ that everything is downhill after age 40,” says Dr May Chazan, a Canadian gender and feminism professor and one of the few academics researching the rising influence of older women in public affairs. “Much of the writing on social movements and activisms is based on the assumption that [it’s] the domain of youth or famous people. We are telling the stories of women over 60 who are still engaged.”
In greater and greater numbers, women over 60 are applying their energy, experience and social-media skills to causes as broad as climate change, civil and reproductive rights, domestic violence and animal welfare. Most visible are women like Gloria Steinem, 84, who keynoted at the Women’s March, Jane Goodall, 84, speaking and writing on conservation, and Germaine Greer, 79, active in gender studies. In the UK, 63-year-old Cambridge academic Mary Beard has become known as the “troll-slayer” for her work in internet safety. Harriet Hausman, in the US, sits on the executive board of the American Civil Liberties Union – at 94.
For we the rookie activists, it’s easy to feel that this moment in time is uniquely apocalyptic. Our newly raised awareness sees the world lurching suddenly off its axis. But these high-profile, veteran agitators – and the legion of older, unknown women doing as much to bring about change in their private spheres of influence – these are the women who came of age during Women’s Liberation, the Cold War, the rise and fall of communism and nuclear disarmament. The women who pushed prams while protesting Vietnam, burnt bras and consciousness-raised in each other’s living rooms.
“We’ve seen it all,” agrees Robyn Nevin, actress and campaigner for the arts. “We’ve survived the worst aspects of life and enjoyed the best. The decades of history that we’ve lived now offer a useful perspective. We’re alive to the perils of ignoring history’s mistakes. Politicians ignore us at their peril.”
According to US psychology professor Maureen Mchugh, “There is a larger group of educated, previously employed women – who might also have organisational skills around protest – than there has ever been in our whole history.” But also unique in history is the generation of younger women who are native to social media. Many of us within that set who confess to not really knowing how to fight the power beyond liking and reposting don’t have to look far for role models. Follow the faded Greenpeace bumper sticker, knock on the house with the Ban The Bomb poster facing out of the front window. Proverbially, but if we’re so intent on change, would we dare literally?
It’s older women, as well, who can show us how to use particularly female perspectives and particular female talents in a world that still, by and large, underestimates them. “Women are generally stronger than men in emotional and social realms of life,” says demography professor Hal Kendig. “It’s a generalisation but also generally true. These are women who, unlike previous generations, have participated in the labour force in some capacity for most of their lives, who increasingly have money and jobs that require bureaucratic and political skills.”
And, he says, whereas men are more likely to draw back from public life on point of exhaustion after a half-century of unbroken employment, “Women carry huge momentum into their sixties, often experiencing an upsurge of ambition later in life.”
Which is to say, women over 60 are just getting started. “I hit some steam again in the past couple of years,” says Pat Anderson, who co-chaired Australia’s Uluru Statement committee in 2017, and is now in her late sixties. “I’ve been my busiest, working for change so that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have a voice in the decision-making process.”
Like so many women of age, Anderson has no immediate plans – or any plan at all – to pull back from the cause she has worked for her entire life. “I don’t know when I’m ever going to retire. I can’t see myself – metaphorically speaking – sitting on the verandah. There’s always going to be something to do.”