Power Play by Julia Banks

Author:Julia Banks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hardie Grant Books
Published: 2021-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Never too old

‘How old are you?’ No, we’re not back at that political preselection interview. This time I was working in a corporate role, bantering with a senior HR executive as we sat opposite each other in the new-fangled open-plan system that felt more ‘call centre’ than executive suite, so everyone could overhear the conversation. He’d only recently been promoted, and while his promotion didn’t give him a corner office, his new-found status gave him unfettered access to all employee records, including mine.

He knew he couldn’t ask that question, and seemingly put it to me as a joke. So, I ‘joked’ back. ‘That’s an illegal question. The HR guy shouldn’t ask the chief general counsel illegal questions.’

‘Come on … how old are you?’ he persisted, like he had a right to know and he couldn’t be bothered accessing the records.

‘I’m the same age as Demi Moore,’ I said, giving him a visual rather than a metric, while still looking more interested in the emails on my screen. I wasn’t going to make life easy for him. I could have said I was like him and middle-aged – I was roughly ten years older, but I recalled that a British survey does put middle age between thirty-seven and fifty-eight.

Thanks to my public profile since entering politics, my ‘age’ is available for all to see. No more putting people to the inconvenience of searching ‘Demi Moore age’ on the internet. Up until that point, I always resented giving my age, not because I’d feel old, but because I knew that questions about a woman’s age are almost always seeking to enable some kind of prejudiced judgement. Age is probably one of the most critical data points in a woman’s working life that causes bias and discrimination – we know it’s the case for young women, but it’s also the case as women grow older.

The truth is, I don’t know what it’s like to ‘feel old’. If to feel old is to feel chronically tired, then I certainly felt older in my mid-thirties, when I was raising two children and working, than I do now, some twenty-plus years later.

I’m sure some people would assume that, having faced the possibility of the ‘alternative to ageing’ in my late twenties, I would have a healthy perspective on ageing. But I think that saying ageing is better than the alternative is a bleak and depressing way to approach things.

Ageing is part of life. It’s going through life. And just as there are highlights and lowlights in life, so there are in ageing.

I was once out for a rushed lunch with a good friend. She’s much younger than me, but her work and family life are almost identical to mine at the same age.

She was still being asked all the questions: Why aren’t you home with the children? Why are you working full-time? How much mat leave are you taking? Are you having more children? Why? Why not? And then she kept asking herself (albeit guiltily,

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