The Sheila System
Unpaid care, unpaid labour, and now - a coaching course to sell it back to you.
The lack of job opportunities for midlife women is hitting the headlines and AI is the main culprit. But is there also a systemic issue behind it? It’s one in which women 45+ are no longer prepared to transition into the ranks of unsung, later-years load-bearers who keep everything ticking over.
I was at my local hospital the other day - a fairly modern, extremely busy but proudly efficient place in West Yorkshire. As I waited, I watched the to-and-fro; the busy people guiding, nursing, administrating, assessing, supporting, serving, cleaning. What I saw was an army of women holding the entire place up. Mainly women 55+, I’d say. Short-haired, efficient, not taking any crap from anyone and yielding a smile only when it’s earned by an offering of courtesy and respect.
I once heard a comedian refer to these women as ‘Sheilas from Scotland’. They are the women you hope to get when you phone a helpline or call centre, he explained, because you just know Sheila from Scotland is going to get whatever shit you’ve called about sorted. And she’ll call you “love” while you’re at it (whether you’ve earned it or not).
Is it that we are supposed to transition now into these support and organisational roles, the invisible roles that heroically keep everything ticking over but that don’t carry the grand recognition of innovation and leadership?
We midlife women know our minds - and the ways of the world - too well at our age. We are no longer malleable. We are somewhat threatening now, with our questioning and unquiet ways. So, we must be made smaller.
The Water Carriers
I have witnessed first-hand how this can play out in the workplace.
During tough times at one of the companies I worked for, the women who held key strategic, creative and leadership roles were gradually cut from the business. These were women with higher salaries and years of business-critical experience necessary for navigating unsettled waters. They were also, mostly, women with children.
One-by-one, they were axed. It wasn’t noticeable at first. The reasons were business ‘underperformance’ but there was also a whiff of resentment over the salaries they commanded. In tough times, the eye fell on them first. Some had asked for mentorship and c-suite level exposure in lieu of any overdue salary uplift – a fair exchange for the extra hours outlaid when tough times demand you dig in. One was told, “why should we do that for you?” while their 30-year-old male colleague was handed training, mentorship and a pay rise.
As I exited the business, a quick glance over my shoulder revealed that the women left there were the younger, child-free ones – talented and ambitious, grateful and pliable. The women with children who remained in the business were the ones in support and organisational roles - those roles where you fear for their arms getting longer and longer carrying all that water for The Patriarchy Inc, under which The Sheila System operates.
Are You Gliding Yet?
There is a market growing around these midlife women facing their Sheiladom. Author and former fashion editor Stacey Duguid gained 70k Instagram followers practically overnight when she revealed that she was on the dole and had applied for over 160 jobs in just under a year. “It’s at that point, women are told to pivot,” she told me over drinks while on a break from the multiple press interviews she’s been taking on as part of her campaign – via her newly formed community platform Her Encore - to achieve policy change around the use of AI in recruitment. “Midlife men aren’t expected to pivot,” she pointed out.
She’s right. The last time I pivoted, it was on a netball court and I won’t be doing that again. We are also told to reinvent, reconsider and re-emerge. We are offered networking memberships or the promise that a coaching course or a lush retreat will unleash our fuck-it-all-fifty-something-fierce-goddess – an inner deity we must uncover in order to master the new invisibility superpowers we apparently now have. We too can take flight on a new ‘glide path’ to later life acceptance.
But, there’s a price tag attached. Yet again, we must pay. It is the new Midlife Reinvention Tax.
So, what is the solution? And what role can brands, businesses and organisations play in this?
Radical Acts
Women have always been operating as load-bearers. Gen X women were told they could have it all – the career and the family – yet they have found themselves dealing with most of the unrecognised domestic and childrearing load as well as the career. They hit the mother wall with their shoulders while also banging their heads on the glass ceiling.
There are 5.8million unpaid carers in the UK. One in 5 women aged 55-59 are carers. The annual value of unpaid care is £184bn – that’s almost equivalent to the cost of the NHS. 3.6m over-50s are now working part-time, which is an all-time high. There are over 500,000 economically inactive over-50s who say they want to work and 876,000 people aged 50-64 who are actively looking for work. These are the broadest stats – there are no more detailed measurements. And if you cannot measure the problem, how can you solve it?
The solution then is not for individuals to change, but system change. There is one major financial timebomb that the government must recognise and that might sway it from upholding the unpaid caring status quo that saves it a huge amount of money – and it’s called the longer life economy. If we’re expected to live longer and if many of us have ongoing financial obligations including longer-term mortgages (necessary in order to make house ownership possible) that are set to expire into our sixties – topped off by insufficient pensions – then we need to work way past our 50s. If we do not, as a nation we will all be paying a Midlife Tax.
Radical action is not for these women (and an increasing number of men) to undertake. The radical action is a system change that says bye-bye to treating women like the Sheilas, and hello to the Staceys. These are women like Stacey Duguid – cool, sexy, aspirational, representative, relatable, experienced, talented - and 100% employable in every kind of role.
Any brand or business willing to support this system change is guaranteed to have the wind behind them.
*All stats are available via the ONS, Gov.uk, Carers UK, Pensions UK, Centre for Ageing Better.
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