In this episode, we speak to Sue West Director of Flourish After 50, which is a social enterprise supporting women over 50 who might need a little bit of help around common major life transitions. Listen to Sue as she tells us about her inspiring career in social change.
Find out more about Sue West's social enterprise Flourish After 50 at www.flourishafterfifty.com.au
The invisible woman project funded by our social enterprise's impact program promotes awareness and actions for women and gender-diverse people. To age with dignity, security, and safety. Find out more on justgoldwomen.net or on our socials @justgoldwomen.
Hosted by Voula Stamatakis
Edited and produced by Carley Bishop
This is a Just Gold podcast.
[00:00:00] Carley Bishop: This is a just gold podcast.
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[00:00:03] Carley Bishop: Captured on the lands of the peoples of the east Eastern Kulin nation. We pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging.
[00:00:27] In this episode, we speak to Sue. Director of Flourish after 50, which is a social enterprise supporting women over 50 who might need a little bit of help around common, major life transitions. Listen to Sue as she tells us about her inspiring career in social change.
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[00:00:46] Sue West: I started flourish after 50 as a bit of a response to my own challenges during the pandemic, I found myself wondering whether there was more that I could do with the next 10 years of my life. I'm. Turning 58 in a few days time and last year in particular. So 2021 wondered in thinking about the next 10 years that I have left of my working life, whether there was something more that I could do and I looked around at women my age and I could see quite a bit of suffering.
[00:01:25] In particular, there were women who were Retiring early because of work circumstances or struggling to get the jobs they wanted. Were being as this podcast suggests, not seen so invisible women. And I thought, I've got a whole lot of skill in interpersonally coaching, mentoring. There might be something I can do here.
[00:01:51] When I looked around at what was available to support women, I could see there was a real gap. A lot of the programs and initiatives available are for women in mid-career, or women starting new careers, women mid-career. And it seemed to me that there was a gap in Over 50. And I think one of the things that in particular struck me was that as professional women, we are boomers, baby boomers, or at the tail end of baby boomers, and therefore a generation of women who are incredibly talented, skilled, highly educated, our mothers, for many of us, our mother.
[00:02:35] Didn't live the sort of lives that we have led and therefore, in thinking about how we spend the later part of our years, So after 50, the second half of our life, there weren't, none of us had really good role models. So it, for me, there was a huge gap that I saw that that needed to be filled.
[00:02:55] Women my age and older have been some of the pioneers in Australia around women's rights. And it's been an incredibly challenging time for us to watch, particularly over the last 12 months as younger women have been letting us know that things are not going well for them in places and spaces where it should be a great place for women to thrive.
[00:03:17] So I think that generally there's a call across society. To do better for women. What I wanna do is focus my efforts on women in a particular age group. And what I see there are women who are sometimes. Concerned about their future. They might be experiencing fear about how am I gonna spend my time going forward?
[00:03:41] My kids are leaving home. Sometimes they're looking after aging parents or they're they're facing the sort of normal developmental things that. In their fifties, sixties, and seventies face. But as I said, they don't necessarily have the role models for knowing what to do about that. And so they're, Although we are the generation of women who made a difference for the women who are coming up now, we're also a generation of women who continue to be the ones that are breaking down the barriers and forging new pathways.
[00:04:16] And that can be challenging work and that can be tiring work.
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[00:04:22] Carley Bishop: We asked Sue if she thinks we're at a point in time where things are changing.
[00:04:26] Sue West: We are at a point in time where things are changing. I think it's quite clear in Australia, at least with the most recent federal election, that there's a growing intolerance of some of the Bully Boy behavior that we've seen in politics.
[00:04:42] There's a new sort of politics being demanded, and there's been a real backlash and forward movement toward women who represent a different sort of politics. So I think certainly at a political level, we are seeing a demand for a different narrative, a different story, a different culture. I think in other places, if I think about Australia's other institutions, which might be the boardroom, might be sports, the media, et cetera, I think we still have a long way to go.
[00:05:12] I do see that there. Many people getting active in the space. And the Me Too movement is one example of wanting corporations, workplaces to be better for women. And but we know there is still some really appalling practices. I think the other thing that that I see is that for example, that women who.
[00:05:37] Over 50 are the fastest growing group of homeless people in Australia. So if we take that statistic alone, we go, What's happening in our society where we have women experiencing such high levels of vulnerability in their fifties that isn't something that happened to them in their fifties. It's something that's happened to them across their life course, which means by the time they're in Their fifties, things are really not going well for them. So I think there's much more that we still have to do for women. The other group that I think there is much more support that we can provide for female or women members of the L G B T I Q community who have also experienced a level of marginalization across their lifetime.
[00:06:24] And when they come into their fifties, sixties, and seventies, that's, that can be a time when those disadvantages and vulnerabilities are compounded. So I think it's that intersectionality of gender with all of the other sorts of challenges and disadvantages and vulnerabilities that that people experience come together and throw in a bit of ageism to the mix.
[00:06:45] And it can be a really tough time.
[00:06:47] I have had a fantastic career that started when I was in my early twenties working in community development roles in Melbourne's disadvantaged communities.
[00:07:00] And then I moved into policy and planning roles in local government and then into research environments. So working in universities and then finally at the Murdock Children's Research Institute where I had the great pleasure of. Being able to think about the evidence for what we know this was in particular in the early childhood development area.
[00:07:23] What's the evidence around what we know can make a difference to kids in the early years? And then advocating for policies and strategies that can help. Change outcomes for kids. And it's really that set of skills that I'm carrying forward into my work with Flourish after 50. So, Although I've talked about coaching and mentoring and also running some small groups, I think the other part of this for me is the advocacy around aging and that, that sort of thread of wanting to make a difference in the world, that kind of the change maker in me has been constant in my career.
[00:07:58] The other thing that I would say is that as well as working in paid work, I've always been involved have done voluntary work and have been involved in committees and organizations that have been about social change, whether it was people for nuclear disarmament when I was in my twenties through to setting up the Rainbow Families Council.
[00:08:21] Running the prospective lesbian parents group when I decided I wanted to have kids. I've always been involved in in volunteer work that's been about contributing to society and wanting to make a difference in the world so that, as I said, the change maker in me can't be kept down. It's the all the time.
[00:08:39] It's a very big thread in my life.
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[00:08:45] Carley Bishop: We asked Sue where this passion for change making came from and what got her started so early.
[00:08:50] Sue West: It's almost hard for me to say where this interest in wanting to change the world came from. But it started when I was in Catholic schools and in the seventies I went to a Catholic girls school where there were nuns who were teachers that had lived in poverty stricken countries who bought tales to us of paraplegics that were treated unfairly in the world.
[00:09:22] I guess it was at a time in the Catholic Church when there was. A fair amount of focus on social justice. So I was exposed to stories in my teenage years about the injustices facing the world. And I reference that Carefully, because I also know that the Catholic church has been involved in perpetrating a lot of inequities, and particularly, for example, to communities like mine, the B T I Q communities.
[00:09:49] And so I don't want to say that my whole life has been informed by Catholicism, but I was certainly exposed to injustice. But also then a sense that there are things that there that are within our power to do something about. So school for me was a very different environment to my home life. At home.
[00:10:11] I was, white bread, suburban Melbourne, on with things. And it was at school where I was. Exposed to a whole lot of different ideas about how the world was really, and and a really keen message about it's up to us, all of us, to do something about that.
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[00:10:31] Carley Bishop: We ask Sue if she worries about what will happen to her as she grows older.
[00:10:35] Sue West: in lots of ways, I experience all the same things as the women that I hope to support. And that experience speaks to the. The complex nature of aging in our society of the real life lived experience of being a woman in her late fifties, being a mother and step mother being a lesbian, All of those things for me combine at this time of my life in.
[00:11:09] In different ways. And I guess what I would say is that on the whole, I feel really great in my life, and then there are times when I Start to have some nervousness about what my future holds. I think the pandemic has really contributed to that strongly. And at the moment there's a lot of, disruption in the world around finances and the cost of living and where all that's going is.
[00:11:36] There's a lot of unknowns and for me I don't sit well with the unknown , so it can be hard. But I think what that means is that having an owning. Those experiences for myself, means that I come to others with an appreciation of what they might be experiencing and an authenticity because it would be I think it wouldn't be so pleasant to sit with someone whose life was all rosy And wonderful when when you are struggling. And so I just want to be kind of real and open with the women that I work with and I draw inspiration from my own experience. I think there's, for me, there's a question about appropriation isn't the right word, but I wouldn't want to say that my experiences, because I am a privileged white middle class woman I wouldn't say that my experience is everybody's experience and I wouldn't like for anyone to think that I speak for all women or that I come even close to some women's experiences. I have my own challenges, as I said, but I certainly have a very strong empathy and a keen eye for women over 50 who may be facing other challenges as well.
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[00:13:01] Sue West: One of the things that I've come to see around the world is the way in which there's a rethink or a reframing of what it means to grow older, and particularly for people over 50.
[00:13:18] And it's been really interesting to me to discover this because as I said earlier, my field, my background was in early childhood development. So coming to this area of aging and long life studies has been new to me. But what I discovered was that there is, for example, a group that's emerged in the US called the Wisdom School, and what, where they talk about themselves as modern elders and modern elders is this concept that People in their fifties, sixties and seventies have incredible wealth of knowledge and skills and sometimes wealth that they can contribute to the world, it's really about, rather than seeing, Aging as a process of becoming decrepit or invisible, it's a time of flourishing in the wisdom and knowledge that we have that we can share with others. As we also continue to grow and learn ourselves there's a very interesting author who talks about this period of time as being akin to adolescents, and she refers to it as "middlescents", adolescence of midlife. And what she means by that is that developmentally we are going through a whole of changes as we shift our focus from work and family and from ourselves to other and the world. And what she talks about is the importance of paying attention to middle essences and really, using it as a moment, to refocus our lives.
[00:14:58] It becomes almost like an age stage thing and a period of transition.
[00:15:03] And if what we know about transitions or the anatomy of a transition is that it's a period of time of leav. Something, creating something new and emerging into something else. And I think that's a really beautiful way of framing life. After 50, an opportunity for reinvention, realigning ourselves, rediscovering ourselves, and and planning a different life for ourselves going forward.
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[00:15:40] Sue West:
[00:15:40] I want all women to be visible I want them to live in a world that sees us as the amazing people that we are. My ambition for women is that they experience themselves in the, their fifties, sixties, and seventies for all that they are and all that they can be, and that it's a really positive time of life. And that's why I set up Flourish After 50 if you'd like to know more. About us. Please reach out. We're at flourishafterfifty.com.au and I'm Sue West.
[00:16:19] Carley Bishop: The invisible woman project funded by our social enterprises impact program promotes awareness and actions for women and gender diverse people. To age with dignity, security, and safety. Find out more on justgoldwomen.net or on our socials justgoldwomen