Clearly there is something going on out in the world. It’s beyond the scope of AGEIST to explain or really comment on the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. There are bigger brains doing a better job at that than we can. There are, however, some AGEIST-related facts that you may find fascinating. We have now been doing interviews and research for about 3 years non-stop. That makes us very well informed. These are the facts: 65% of our readers are women; they are probably 10 times more interactive with us than the men; we get 5 amazing women to profile for every man. Most interesting is, we find that within our gang, something is happening when women are in their mid-50s. It’s: game on, this is my time, let’s get this done. Female turbo mode. I am telling you this from the vantage point of thousands of hours of interviews. The men tend to recede and the women just take off. As our friends at the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies put it, in 10 years there will be boardroom discussions about a diversity problem: they will need to get more men.
I am a 59-year-old man. I watch this unfolding in front of me and it is extraordinary. True, what I am witnessing is the leading edge; AGEIST readers are not average. But I want you all to ponder something. There is a new section of life that has been created: this is the 50-80 window of high productivity, high engagement, and high capacity. Women are leading here. I want you to envision in 10 years what this is going to look like. I am not a futurist, nor do I claim any special predictive abilities. What we do at AGEIST is simply say, “This is the current reality, this is what is happening now.” But if I were to be a futurist, I would bet on the future being female to a much higher degree than it is now. The very wise Gloria Feldt told me, “The men just need to make room for the women.” It’s happening.
