"When women in their 50s or 60s are made visible, it is often on the condition that they look 10 or 20 years younger. As a result, women in their 60s are effectively invisible-present only if their age is erased. This narrows ambition, encourages self-censorship, and makes later-life leadership or reinvention seem abnormal rather than expected. It quietly redistributes power away from aging women by making long careers harder to imagine, claim, and inhabit."
"When women disappear from view as they age, they lose access to role models at exactly the moment when careers are supposed to stretch and evolve. If you are expected to work for 50 years but can only see the first 20 years of that life represented-in leadership, in organizations, in the media-then most of your working life remains unimaginable."
A paradox exists where stronger calls for inclusion coincide with fewer visibly older women in public life. Women who age naturally, showing lines and visible age, have largely vanished from media and leadership. When older women appear, they are often presented as ageless, resembling a 'Forever 35' aesthetic. The near-erasure of visibly older women limits access to role models precisely when careers should evolve, making later-life professional authority and reinvention seem unimaginable or abnormal. Visibility is frequently conditional on looking younger, which narrows ambition, encourages self-censorship, and redistributes power away from aging women. Individual choices are not the primary cause.
Read at Fast Company
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