We need older women in the workplace

Golden girls have so much to offer.

The headline seemed horrific. More than half the women of Britain over the age of 60 are “forced to work” according to the Office of National Statistics.

This appalling tragedy is due to the “crippling impact of the rising pension age”.

Join me, fellow wrinklies, on the streets and let’s protest together. Get out the placards “We Demand The Right Not To Work”.

Except you won’t find Esther Rantzen, aged 73, on the streets protesting I’m too busy working! And I’m really grateful for the opportunity.

Yes, it’s true that just over half the women of 60 plus are still at work, (51.5%, so not a huge majority), but surely that is wonderful news.

Sixty is the new 40. Given good health mental and physical a woman of 60 is energetic, skilled, and with plenty of that most precious quality, life-experience.

We need these older women in the workplace, not just because it saves billions in pensions, but because they can contribute so much.

I don’t believe in “the crippling impact” of the rise in pension age. I welcome it.

Yes, I know that I am lucky to enjoy my work. Many don’t. For some, perhaps, a few extra years in a factory or behind a till may feel like a prison sentence.

But look for a moment at the alternative. Retirement can be busy and productive. But it can also feel like rejection, isolation, a loss of friends, the feeling, as one older lady wrote to me, “that life is pointless and I am a waste of space”.

Loneliness is an epidemic among the old. I know about it. I have felt it myself, the sudden vacuum in your heart. The erosion of self-esteem.

So I am setting up a new charity, a helpline for older people called The Silver Line, which will launch across the UK at the end of November, offering information and friendship.

We are already running a pilot, and we have unearthed a real, national scandal. The scale and severity of loneliness among the older generation is appalling. This week we had a call late at night from an older lady who said: “I just wanted to have someone to say goodnight to.”

Another said: “Could you ask Esther if it’s alright for me to keep the number next to my phone? It makes me feel so much safer.”

One, Jeremy, said: “When I put the phone down I feel like I belong to the human race.”

I have spoken to older people whose voices are rusty from disuse, who tell me they haven’t spoken to anyone for days. One described her life as “solitary confinement, looking at the same four walls, day after day”. Solitary confinement is usually the punishment for a terrible crime. Her only crime was to have grown old.

For years I have watched ageism prevail. In television some of the most talented people were forced out at 55, just when they were at their most productive and experienced.

Older workers prove their worth, we are reliable, conscientious, and skilled.

Of course nobody who is physically or mentally frail should be forced to work. But for the rest of us, work keeps us young, connected, part of a team, and filled with a sense of achievement. So let’s welcome the fact that we no longer chuck this precious resource, our older people, on the scrapheap.

They need us . . . and we need them.