Our Women Over 70 blog is inspired by our podcast, Women Over 70: Aging Reimagined, where we talk weekly with women in their 70s-100s about things that matter to women as we age. You can listen to their stories in 8 different categories. This blog focuses on Enhancing Career.
When did the people in your circle begin talking with you, if ever, about your career aspirations? Some of our podcast guests were in families that encouraged them to dream big and become whatever they wanted to be–through education, travel, creative ventures, entering male-saturated fields. For many of our guests, however, the presumed options were limited: teacher, nurse, or secretary. One guest’s mother announced, “you will be a teacher; your brother will be the attorney.”
And most women over 70 were expected to marry and raise children. While the baby-boomer pioneers faced many obstacles to ‘having it all,’ we acted as if and tried to do it all anyway. Women who are now over 70 went on to fashion remarkable careers as leaders in a variety of fields such as sales and marketing, church leadership, workforce development, college teaching, and museum management.
Whether we intentionally charted our career, or our career chose us (through circumstance or opportunity), the career paths of Women Over 70 guests, then and now, are guided by a theme, mission or passion.
Leni Garfunkel (age 77, ep. #130) began her career as a teacher, as did so many women. When Leni realized that teaching was about “influencing changes in behavior,” she transferred these foundational skills to vocations in sales, insurance, real estate, and air purification systems.
Betty Rauch (age 77, ep. #102) brought decades of corporate marketing expertise to support nonprofits that serve incarcerated and low-income women. Jean Ann Durades (age 89, ep. #126) chose teaching because she “couldn’t imagine anything else.” She realizes that teaching and mentoring have been the central threads in her evolving career as a social worker and a long-term field officer and trainer with the YMCA.
Susan Neustrom (age 70, ep. #14) earned her GED at age 48. She draws on insights from her own transformational journey to inform her expansive work as a teacher, author, and coach.
The women in the ‘enhancing career’ category do not engage in the language or behaviors of ‘retirement.’ They are busy creating new norms and pathways for themselves and other women. They apply their professional know-how to new contexts, often addressing any number of social ills and issues.
You need not be working for pay or doing exactly the same thing as before. You do need to acknowledge your accomplishments and claim your worth. The knowledge, skills and habits of mind you honed during your career(s) are gifts you continue to offer family and friends, community, and any sphere that is graced with your presence.
Women Over 70 offers guidance in exploring new ideas to utilize your accomplishments and claiming your worth. Recognition of these gifts are often the first steps to a more satisfying and creative life.
