by Erica and Karen

Overnight invisibility.

We have heard from many retired women—and older women generally—that they feel invisible. The day after they leave their jobs, or they day they turn 40, they disappear.

We experienced the same thing when we retired. We were shocked. We had not changed. The experience and skills we had the day before had not evaporated. We had ended our jobs, on a high note, and now we were ready to use what we had learned to create something new. But no-one could see us. What was going on?

We thought about it for a while and concluded that one reason for our invisibility is that we are different. We no longer fit within any of the expected roles in society. We had been defined by our careers, and now we didn’t have careers—and therefore we were perceived as lacking utility. Old and done. We were hidden behind stereotypes—stereotypes that are linked to age, and an image of older women that is archaic.

Well, now we are coming out—as modern women who are the modern face of retirement. We are not going to turn on, tune in and drop out. (We didn’t do that the first time, either.) We are not going to be consigned to rocking chairs. We’re not the retirees of the 1950s. We do not plan to recede into passivity, with dim smiles on our faces as we watch flowers growing in fields.

We are women who have lived a long time, but we are not old, or feeble, or uncertain. We are vibrant and engaged. We are the lucky beneficiaries of advances in public health that mean we will live decades longer than people did a century ago, and we will remain sentient for a long time. We are pathbreakers.

We fought to become women of the world, we changed that world, and now we want to stay in the world we helped create. We will demand to be seen for who we are, and we will demand a continuing role in society. And why would anyone object? We have a lot to offer, and there are a lot of us who want to offer what we have.

We can be contributors or takers, leaders or nonparticipants, productive or needy. We can propel others toward a brilliant future, or we can be a drag on that future. The right choice is obvious. Why make the wrong one by pretending you can’t see us?

Let’s move forward in this twenty-first century, and recognize retired and older women as assets. See us, and make the most of us. It’s the modern thing to do.