Egan, who moved to Australia in her twenties from Dublin as a direct seller of Tupperware and built a career while raising a family, grandchildren and balancing a marriage, is pushing back.
She says her age and experience are her biggest assets.
“I have literally worked from the ground up to be where I am now,” she says.
“I’m probably at the stage of life where I look at my next decade as being my best ever. I’m looking at now turning the decades of experience that I’ve had into my greatest advantage, and actually leveraging that rather than walking away from it.”
Christine Khor, the founder and chief executive of executive coaching firm Peeplcoach, says women at Egan’s age are often at their most powerful professionally because they had reached a radical stage of self-acceptance. They typically also no longer have young children to raise.
“So it’s a stage of, ‘You know what? I’m not putting up with this. I’m going to say what I need to say. I’ve earned my stripes now. I don’t need to be liked any more,’” Khor says.
However, she notes that many women still struggle with internal criticism that stems from societal expectations, which can hold them back from life-altering decisions, such as going for a promotion.
Khor said the key for women who want to push themselves further in their careers but are grappling with internal voices or self-doubt is to ask themselves: “Who said that?”
“We make up things in our heads. ‘Oh, I can’t do this because my friends will judge me. My husband will get upset with me, or my children will somehow miss out.’
“I always say to my clients, both men and women, what role modelling do you want to show? How do you want to turn up in the world? How do you want to be seen?”
The challenges for women aren’t just confined to career progression.
The workplace wealth gap
Jonathan Kearns, Challenger’s chief economist, says women in opposite-sex couples often retire prematurely to match an older partner’s timeline or are forced out of work at multiple stages to look after children, grandchildren or ageing parents.
Coupled with longer life expectancies, the result is women spending, on average, 20 years in retirement compared with 15 years for men.
“So that’s a significant challenge for women, who are spending more time in retirement, and yet many of them have fewer years in the workforce, and so less opportunity to save for retirement and less in their superannuation balances,” says Kearns.
According to data from the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA), women had an average super balance of $313,360 by the time they reached the ages of 60 to 64, compared to a man’s $395,852.
A Workplace and Gender Equality Agency report released last year found that women, on average, earned about $1.5 million less than men over the course of their careers, representing a substantial loss in potential tax revenue.
Jess Brady, a money educator, says women should take stock of their finances, such as determining when a mortgage or any other outstanding debts will be paid off, as early as possible to give them the maximum amount of flexibility later in life.
“We want people to work because they want to, not because they have to,” she says.
Egan, who started taking her own finances seriously when she was in her thirties, has introduced financial literacy training for her own employees.
“For the women, especially the older ladies, the men in their lives typically took care of all the finances, and whether they’re now dead or they’re divorced, now suddenly they’re needing to look at it,” she says.
As life expectancies climb, Brady says the traditional approach to retirement is being reimagined, with more retirees opting for part-time consulting, charity work or board roles.
She says this means people entering retirement age can afford to be a little bit riskier with their investing, despite conventional wisdom arguing for a conservative approach.
“Most people have decades of life expectancy left, and so looking at what we call a bucketing style approach to allocating your money into short-, medium- and long-term investments might be more appropriate.”
Older workers present a productivity opportunity
As outlined in Treasury’s 2023 Intergenerational Report, as Australia’s population ages and the labour participation rate decreases, the economy will need a greater utilisation of its most experienced workers.
Australia’s median age rose from 33.4 in 1994 to 38.3 as of June 2024, and by 2071 is projected be as high as 47.6 years. While the prevailing narrative suggests that workforces become less productive as they age, one recent study found the opposite.
A survey of 1450 workers conducted by the London School of Economics and global consulting firm Protiviti across the finance, technology and professional services industries in Britain and the US found that Gen Z and Millennials self-reported the highest levels of “low productivity” at 37 per cent and 30 per cent, respectively, compared to only 14 per cent of Baby Boomers.
The study concluded that workplace productivity isn’t about age, but rather whether a company knows how to bridge the gap between generations.
Egan says she’s witnessed first-hand the benefits of a multi-generation workforce across her organisation’s more than 3500 employees in Australia and New Zealand, which she says is intentional about breaking down age barriers through its hiring processes.
She says her company has everyone from young mothers in their early twenties to franchisees in their mid-seventies on its books.
“The younger employees will lean into the older ones’ experience, while the older ones will lean into the younger ones’ newer ways of doing things. Both cohorts learn from each other,” she says.
Egan says she herself plans to work for as long as her mind and body will allow her.
“I’m planning on living to 102 because my grandmother lived to 102, and I told her I would beat her. I’m planning to be around for a lot longer,” she says.
