As a middle-aged woman, I know what it’s like to be excluded by the media. But female liberation isn’t just for the young

Harriet Harman is right to point out that women over 50 in broadcasting are as rare as hen’s teeth. I should know, I’ve been campaigning against gendered-ageism for years

Harriet Harman called on Ofcom to release data on older people in broadcasting this week (Getty Images)

When I was growing up, it was said that culturally, the UK is about five years behind our US cousins. While I hope that's not true in terms of gun legislation, private healthcare and anything related to Donald Trump, I'm very taken with their growing representation of middle-aged women. Or as Catherine O’Hara put it, women of “a certain age”. Because when it comes to the UK, I’m in agreement with Harriet Harman that women over 50 in broadcasting are as rare as hen’s teeth.

In my Acting Your Age campaign survey, I found that only 9 per cent of people can identify more than 20 leading middle-aged female actors in the UK compared to 49 per cent who can identify more than 20 leading, middle-aged male actors. Middle-aged men get to play Bond, middle-aged women get to play the killjoy and there are still more documentaries in the UK about paedophiles, than there are comedies and dramas led by women over the age of 45.

Naming leading male actors over the age of 40 in TV and film (Nicky Clark)

Naming leading female actors over the age of 40 in TV and film (Nicky Clark)

In 2018, two years after restarting the acting career that I’d trained for in a more optimistic time, I launched my Acting Your Age Campaign because those hen’s teeth weren’t just rare, they’re as invisible as a middle-aged Hollywood star paired romantically with a woman his own age.  

In the four years since trying to restart my career, I’ve been invited to two castings and in both cases, they’ve “gone in another direction” and that direction was younger.  

My campaign and the film accompanying it has been supported by stellar leading figures in UK film and TV, yet oddly I’ve found that broadcasters have been far less willing to meet with me, or feature my campaign on their programmes, particularly my best beloved BBC. Despite the BBC being available to other concerned groups, the representation of women over 45, a known problem as this BBC monitoring diversity report shows, in UK film, TV and broadcasting it doesn’t seem to be deemed an issue worth changing.  

It’s not just the BBC. Unsurprisingly, the under-representation of middle-aged women by broadcasters in Ofcom's 2018 report, wasn’t picked up by the wider media.  

However, a deep dive into the data of awards ceremonies over the last 20 years shows that middle-aged male actors winning best actor Oscar and Bafta awards outnumber middle-aged women by four to one and three to one, respectively. Last year’s best-supporting actor Bafta nominations alone saw five actors aged from 82-56 and four actresses aged 53-24. So, Brad Pitt as the youngest actor in his category, was still older than Laura Dern, the oldest actress in her category.

My questions to UK broadcasters and filmmakers is why? Why are we still living under a draconian system of gendered ageism which bears absolutely no relationship to the audience expected to watch them? With 12,000,000 women in the UK aged between 40 and 69, a demographic still ignored or offered nothing more than being an adjunct to the male character in talking cardigan roles, when are we going to see ourselves on screen?  

Women in middle age are more than consumers. We talk so much about women having agency and autonomy over our lives, we hear all the time rightly, about young women rejecting slut-shaming and body shaming and still our naturally ageing faces and hair are deemed failures and our stories rejected in favour of much younger women and middle-aged men only. This obsession and devotion to gendered ageism, is driving girls as young as 13 to seek botox.  

We need young female actors starting their drama training today to be able to expect career longevity that is equal, otherwise, young women should expect to pay only a third of their tuition fees, compared to clearing it entirely, as their male counterparts are more likely to do. Male actors might see a pause in their careers but it won’t be because of their age and they won’t be expected to chemically modify their faces and hair in order to get work.  Gendered ageism is so normalised now that it’s deemed anti-feminist even to mention that chemical modification as a standard when women age, is incredibly oppressive. Writer Caitlin Moran's newfound enthusiasm for botox, something of a literal volte-face, is, she says, based on the fact that "By the time you hit 45 its the fact that you do look weak and scared and also semi traumatised that makes you consider it". Why is this sort of rationale deemed ok and sisterly when it comes to collective women's faces as we age. We wouldn't see feminists promoting celibacy as a way of looking "less weak or scared" or saying fat women would look less "semi traumatised" if they were thinner. Why is it ok to apply this negative rhetoric to the unadulterated faces of older women?

We’re starting to get so much better at understanding the vital importance of representation. In terms of race, in terms of sexuality, disability, class and gender, where representation for women under the age of 45 on-screen and on-air, is roughly equal.

However, when it comes to gender and age, we still have so much more to do. The last two years of campaigning on this issue has seen me ignored by broadcasters with only two notable exceptions (Sky News and Channel 5 news) or ridiculed online, where there is still a very relaxed attitude to ageism, as long as it’s only women being ridiculed.  

The toughest part to accept about calling for women to have a career not determined by a calendar, is the silencing which we are expected to comply with. There is a huge resource of writers and performers and documentary film makers who are completely ignored and disregarded by commissioners and new writing schemes.  

As my Acting Your Age Campaign highlights in UK film, TV and broadcasting, men have a whole life and women only a shelf life.

Nicky Clark is a writer, performer and equality campaigner. For more information about her Acting Your Age Campaign, click here