‘She has rigorous journalism, a keen eye for detail, and is adored by her teams.’
These words from an ex-boss – which take pride of place at the top of my CV – should, in theory, make getting a job easier, right? Wrong.
At 67 I’ve spent decades building my skill set, yet in the last three years I’ve applied for 38 jobs and got absolutely nowhere.
That’s partly because factual television is going through a historic downturn right now, so everyone is feeling the pinch. But for women over 50 it’s a harder market to crack than ever.
We are vanishing from the workplace because of our age, and that has to stop.
My first job in TV was as a researcher on the current affairs fixture, Nationwide, in the 1980s.
I was twenty-something at the time and relished the adrenaline-fuelled atmosphere. I also had my eyes firmly set on becoming a film director.
Perhaps that’s why I hardly noticed that, even then, older women were a bit of a rarity on TV. Or maybe I just didn’t think it’d affect me because I was young and full of hope and aspirations.
Either way, the grey-haired men in suits that seemed to go from strength to strength both in front of and behind the camera didn’t faze me.
Gradually I worked my way up the ladder and, by the turn of the 20th century, it honestly felt the tide had turned for women.
I was a staff Series Producer at the BBC, running shows like Crimewatch UK and the UK’s first ever Holocaust Memorial Day event, meanwhile people like Lorraine Heggessey and Jane Root were Controllers of BBC One and BBC Two respectively.
The glass ceiling seemed to have been cracked, if not shattered.
But, by the time I was 51, I reluctantly took voluntary redundancy from the BBC because the roles I was being offered were beginning to wear thin.
It was a difficult decision. I was sad to leave a job I loved, but felt it was my only option.
Granted I used it as an opportunity to fulfil a lifelong ambition and gain my masters degree in creative writing and finish a novel, but part of my heart still belonged to TV.
For a while afterwards, I developed a portfolio career combining TV with print journalism and establishing myself as an author, finally getting my novel published. The wonderful thing about the book world is that age is irrelevant – authors can go on forever.
However, as time has gone on, my ability to get television work has completely dried up.
I appreciate that our industry is a project-based business staffed largely by freelancers who are hired ad hoc to fulfil each series commissioned by broadcasters and streamers.
With that comes short contracts and a constant carousel of opportunity, but older women are simply being thrown off by those centrifugal forces.
I once interviewed for a job where my CV matched the requirements perfectly, but later was gutted to see that they actually re-advertised the post without changing a word of the job description.
Either I performed shockingly on the day, or the executive producer twigged that she’d be boss to someone 20 years her senior. I could have handled it, but maybe she couldn’t.
Perhaps it’s my grey hair that threw her off. I started going grey in my thirties – a family trait I don’t fight – but while I aspire to look like a chic older woman with an edgy silver bob, I probably remind some people too much of their mothers. Or grandmothers.
But then I’m also fitter than many younger people. I do yoga, run and swim, and now that my three children are adults I am free to work long hours if I need to. Not that I ever get a chance to prove that.
Women are undoubtedly affected more by these aesthetic biases, but men are not completely immune.
My film director husband decided to retrain as a psychotherapist after work dried up. However in his new profession, his wisdom, grey hair and Freud-like appearance are assets, not handicaps.
And it’s not just in looks that we’re being let down anyway.
I’ve heard a 50+ applicant trying for a head of department position being advised to cheat her CV age by removing education dates and lopping 10 years off her experience.
Or how, when another executive jobseeker mentioned she was 52, a head of HR – who himself was near 50 at the time – told her: ‘You’re too old, forget it.’
Those revealing, off-guard informal moments make me despair.
I’ve never lied about my age for a job but I’m paying the price for it.
The singular role I’ve interviewed for in the last three years, I was overqualified for and still didn’t get it.
I’m not alone, of course: In 2022 the Film and TV Charity calculated at least 23,600 older workers were missing from the combined workforce, about 12% of the total. And things haven’t improved.
While over-50s’ off-screen contributions have increased over the past four years – from 21.5% in 2019/2020 to 23.5% in 2022/2023 – it still falls below the workforce average of 32.4%.
Diamond – which monitors industry-wide diversity – says that over-50s are now making fewer contributions as producers and producer directors than they were in 2019/2020.
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This is a problem the whole industry should own. Broadcasters, streamers, production companies, PACT (the Producers Alliance for Film and TV) and the trade unions.
Our industry already has ethnic and disability diversity targets enforced by financial penalties. I’d like to see the same rules apply for hiring people over-50.
For now, I’ve reinvented myself as a writer first and foremost – my next book is non-fiction, about Hitchcock’s film Psycho – but I miss the buzz of TV and it will always be part of me.
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My generation doesn’t deserve to be written off prematurely. We deserve to be seen on screen, or heard calling ‘action’ from behind it. And it’s time we were given the opportunities to do so.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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