The Word "Retirement" Is Outdated. Let's Revitalize It.

 By Karen and Erica

Do you like the word retirement? We don’t. In fact, we suspect that absolutely no one likes words beginning with retire. The root of these words is the root of the problem. Who wants to retreat from a world inhabited by everyone else? Especially if you are healthy, sentient, and have a long runway ahead of you.

How did the whole concept of retirement begin? In the U.S, retirement was invented in the 1950’s, as a reward for a job well done, and as an enticement for older workers to make room for younger ones. Public health advances meant that people who reached retirement age could expect to live into their 70s, for the first time exceeding the Social Security retirement age of 65.

These retirees, mostly male, had weathered the Depression and at least one world war. After they stopped working, pensions and Social Security gave them plenty of disposable income. They could relax and have fun in the sun, with other retirees, for the remaining five or ten years of their lives. Indeed, the term “golden years” was coined to market the lifestyle in Sun City, Arizona, America’s first large retirement community.

And fun they did have. Movies and TV created new kinds of entertainment. Airplane travel was becoming affordable. Cars could go long distances on newly built nationwide highways. Fuel costs were low. Retirement was pretty great.

But then something happened. Imperceptibly at first, retirement became more of a stigma than a desired status. By the time we retired--the first large group of career women to stay in the work force for four decades--retirement had totally lost its lustre. To us, the 1950s vision of retirement seems more like a death sentence than a golden goal. So using the word to describe what we were going to do after our long careers came to an end was demoralizing.

What happened?

What happened is that the working world, and the people who work in it, changed dramatically.

First, the work experience of today's retirees is very different from that of those early retirees. Technology changed jobs from mainly physical labor to laboring at a desk. The knowledge economy took hold as we moved from telex and multigraph to computers to mobile phones to personal devices. From local we went global. We had friends and colleagues all over the world with whom we were in constant communication. We saw everything through a much wider lens. We enjoyed operating in a landscape that was expansive, complex, and engaging.  

Second, our runway is not five or ten years. It is closer to thirty. A person who lives past her 50s is likely to live until her 80s or 90s. She will likely remain mentally and physically fit, and technological advances--like self driving cars--will help overcome previously limiting conditions. We are no longer talking about what we are going to do for a decade or less. We are talking about what we are going to do for the next 20 or 30 years—way too long to be in retreat.

Finally, for the first time many of us are women. Women who fought for our careers, women who reshaped the workforce, and women who worked until retirement. We are at the top of our form, and we want to spend the next few decades doing interesting and purposeful things in the wider world. We also have the wherewithal--mental, physical and financial--to shape that next phase.  

The word retirement, as it has come down to us, does not describe what we intend to do now that our careers are over. We mean to give the concept of post-career life a massive overhaul. Just as we tailored the working world to fit our talents and needs, so too will we refashion retirement to make it fit us. We will put forth a new image of what modern retirement can look like. When a modern women retires, her career becomes a starting point, a platform from which to jump to new accomplishments. Retirement is an opportunity to pivot, to put experience and skills to new uses, to learn new things through the lens that four decades of experience provides.

We would love to come up with a new word to go with our new image of post-career life. That has been difficult, so for now, let’s reclaim the word retirement. Make it modern, resplendent, by using it to show what post-career life can be. Bring back its lustre by using it to mark the successful conclusion of a job and the exciting launch of a new and purposeful life. Make sure people understand that retirement marks an extraordinary achievement, is a gateway to a brilliant future, and signifies a status marked by fluidity, energy, activity and engagement.

Please, join the mission.