In the Developed World, Women Over 50 Need to Be Our Focus: My Reply to Cherie Blair

by Dr. Ellen Brandt


A few days ago, LinkedIn featured a post by Cherie Blair, reworked from her talk at the recent Milken Institute Global Conference on the world economy. Blair, the wife of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and a prominent attorney and political figure in her own right, is also, like Hillary Clinton, a leading Limousine Liberal, preaching a One-World agenda that advocates one-kind-fits-all economic strategies and practices for every country and region of the globe, seeking to level all economic, social, and cultural differences.


Many of us, especially we Republicans, don't like this philosophy one little bit! But addressing the general topic of the Limo-Lib One-Worlders is not the purpose of this article.


I want to share my reply to the specific story Blair just posted, called "Empowering Women Will Drive Economic Growth." The story cited a just-out study by management consultants, which claimed getting more women into the workforce in Developing Countries, plus aiding women entrepreneurs in those countries, would add $28 trillion to worldwide GDP.


Let me stress that I have nothing whatsoever against such efforts aimed at Developing Countries and its female populations, particularly if they are funded and implemented by those Developing Countries themselves.


But once more, good intentions towards the Developing World - and its demographic profile, which now skews dramatically younger than that of the Developed World (plus China) - emphasizes a persistent bias towards the Young and against the Mature, which hasn't been helping anyone anywhere, including the citizens of the Developing World itself, where the masses of the extremely poor have been growing, not shrinking, during at least 30 years of One-World agenda bias.


In any case, here is my reply to Cherie Blair, which I believe readers might appreciate:


(The Reply): Cherie, your headline and thesis is only true - at least, in the Developed World, plus China - if special efforts are made to include the close to 1/2 of American - and European and Japanese and Canadian and Australian and Chinese - women who are now age 50 and above.


In the United States, "Gray" women age 50 and older are already close to 46 percent of all women, period. And the statistics are similar in the other countries and regions cited.


Over 43 percent - or more than 2 in 5 - American women and men are now "Gray" Americans 50 and over. But women still outlive men in the Developed World and China, so women's demographics are "graying" faster.


Moreover, as I am certain you, Cherie, as a highly-educated older woman know, women over 50 throughout the Developed World and China tend to be better educated than our male counterparts, not less so, with higher, not lower, percentages of college-educated women in many Developed countries, for example.


And since women have been pretty much totally integrated into the workforce since we Baby Boomers - people in our 50s and 60s - were teenagers, we also tend to be every bit as experienced, skilled, and entrepreneurial as our male age peers.


The great economic gap - and employment gap - in the Developed World plus China right now has far less to do with Women versus Men - or any ethnic group versus any other ethnic group - than it has to do with generational inequalities, part and parcel of the overall income inequality that has hit this world hard the past 30 years.


All our "Gray" citizens, women and men alike, have been quite literally thrown on the garbage heap of economic, social, and cultural life, for the sole reason that we crossed an imaginary Economic Maginot Line when our hair turned gray.


It is high time to take up the cause of "Gray" Americans and Europeans and Japanese and Chinese and all the other "Gray" citizens worldwide. We - and no other group - are mainly responsible for the Populist upheavals shaking U.S. politics this cycle, with "Grays" in other countries and regions of the globe every bit as angry and as anxious for change.


In terms of international programs and development initiatives geared specifically towards women, be sure that Women Over 50 - which will soon mean an astonishing one-half of all women in the Developed World plus China - are included in such programs. In fact, because of our exceptional educational attainments and work experience, perhaps Women Over 50 should also be the ones implementing such programs and administering them.