The Commission on Older Women today announced its interim report at Labour’s annual Women’s Conference in Brighton, with a wide-ranging set of recommendations designed to support Older Women. The Commission, chaired by Labour’s Deputy Leader Harriet Harman MP, looked into the pressures faced by a new generation of older women.

 Key findings include:

·         Unemployment amongst women aged 50-64 has increased by 41 per cent in the last two and a half years, compared with one per cent overall

·         Grandparents provide care to over 40 per cent of families but have no workplace rights to help support this role

·         Younger age profiles of women in broadcasting, compared to men, both as presenters, in storylines and working off-screen.

Key recommendations include:

·         All employment programmes funded by the Government demonstrating that they support older women, and better careers service support for older women

·         Support for balancing work and family care including “adjustment leave” for carers and a public debate on whether family leave could be shared with grandparents or whether this would set back the already low take-up by fathers

·         Clear and consistent monitoring of older women in the broadcasting industry.

 Harriet Harman MP, Labour’s Deputy Leader, said:

 “There is a new generation of older women - in their 50s and 60s - and they are very different from their mothers’ generation.  The health of women who are now over 50 is markedly better than previous generations, they have much higher educational qualifications and they have done much more in the world of work. They no longer accept the old ideas that women should be subservient to men and they have an expectation that women should be treated as equals.

 "But while so much about women’s lives has changed - public policy remains rooted in the past. 

“Labour’s Commission on Older Women is listening to the voices of this new generation.  Many feel that far from being "past it” they are, with their accumulation of experience, in their prime.  We are looking at the public policy implications and demanding change.”

Yvette Cooper MP, Labour’s Shadow Minister for Equalities said:

“Across every generation women are feeling the strain. Women are being hit three times as hard as men by the Government’s economic policies, despite earning less and owning less than men.

“But there is a middle generation of women whose voices have often been missing from the debate.

"When Labour set up the Commission no one was talking about the ‘stretched middle’. But over the past 12 months the Commission has heard from women across the country who are feeling stretched in all directions.

"Labour will be looking very carefully at the proposals in this report because the generation of women who’ve broken glass ceilings and paved the way for their daughters and granddaughters deserve a better deal.”