The Harsh Truth About Ageism in the Workplace | Jane Evans

0:00My tutor came up and pinched my bum and I was like what the hell did you do that for and he was like Jane you're going to be the first girl in a creative department you've got a half down answer like that like that like that and for the next two years he sexually harassed me at least once a week.

0:16Courageous Leaders Podcast Host:How did you emotionally cope with that? I got hauled in to my managing director's office asking what drugs I was on. There'd never be a female creative director in Sydney so forget it. I'm speechless. It's time for the fourth wave of feminism. Jomaine Greer always said, if the struggle isn't joyous, it's the wrong struggle. A woman with no pension, a 63 years old, setting up a business is terrifying. Hello and welcome back to the Courageous Leaders podcast. I'm your host, Joanna Howes, and today's guest is one of her generation's most successful female creatives, Jane Evans. After finding herself invisible in midlife, Jane set out to change the narrative and through founding the Seventh Tribe, she is on a mission to unleash the power of midlife women to change the world.

1:04Courageous Leaders Podcast Host:So let's dive in. Jane, welcome to the show. As you know, I like to dive straight in. What has been a courageous moment for you? Oh my goodness, so many. I think my life has been a series of courageous moments. I can't think of one that actually stands out. I mean, probably being one of the first girls in a creative department. That happened to me three times in my first 10 years of my career. So to actually walk into an environment where in many cases you weren't welcome, you'd never been before, but you just had to hold your head up high even though you had no experience. And, you know, it was really, really challenging.

1:47But there was sort of, I think with everything that I've done that's courageous, there's been this sense of determination behind it this sense of I'm going to show you so yeah probably walking into a creative department as the first girl three times I was quite surprised

2:03Courageous Leaders Podcast Host:when you said it and then you said three times I was really surprised at the three times because you'd think there'd have been a bit of change in the times that you had to move yeah but no it took a long long time to get women into creative departments and in Australia because I started in England and I was the first girl at Ligus Delaney. Then I went over to Australia. I was the first girl at two more agencies. The last one was 10 years into my career where they had basically held out. When I first went to Australia, they basically said, there's two agencies you'll never work at, Jane, for two reasons.

2:42One, you're English and the second that you're a woman. And so, yes, 10 years into my career, I was the first woman at Cleminger. which was really, and that was like 1990.

2:54Courageous Leaders Podcast Host:Yeah, that's what we got called. I worked at Clemenger as well. Oh, really? Very different period of time. Yes, because I've not experienced that and seen that. So I could only imagine how strange that would have been. You're just curious. So when you were training to be a creative, was there any other women in the training with you? There were a lot of women in the training, but we didn't get through. It was actually really interesting. I'm actually just writing a speech where I'm about to tell this story. So there used to be a thing called the Grantin Larger, which was this machine where you did your tracing you know the days before even blow up photocopiers and it was this sort of weird machine that you stepped up into and then you put your artwork on the plate at the bottom you then stepped into it then you then lend over to the glass put a black curtain behind you and basically had your ass akimbo for anybody to come past I was in two days art school and my tutor came up and pinched my bum and I came around and I was like what the hell did you do that for and he was like Jane you're going to be the first girl in a creative department you've got to have to answer like that like that like that and for the next two years he sexually harassed me at least once a week waiting for my comeback and it was absolutely the most important training I had at art school because if anybody came at me I humiliated them hilariously and they never did it again.

4:18And there was an example a few years later, I was working late at night, it was a pitch, I think it was one o 'clock in the morning or something. Again, us in the grant enlarger. And the CEO came up and dry humped me from behind. And I immediately pulled back the curtain, went, can you do that to Mike? You pay him twice as much as me. And the next day I got my pay rise doubled.

4:38Courageous Leaders Podcast Host:Wow. So I learnt very early on that you don't fight, you just are funny um you find you find and nobody will touch you again if you i think who was it margaret atwood said that the women are afraid men will kill them and men are afraid women will laugh at them and so you know actually that was that was the best defense that i had and actually allowed me not to even have to worry about my career again there was no sexual harassment legislation until 10 years into my career either. So it was the days of the wild, wild west. And, you know, the behaviour was, I mean, younger women would be horrified at our stories.

5:22Courageous Leaders Podcast Host:How has that shaped who you are today going through that so early? I think Cindy Gallop says, you know, a fish doesn't know what water is. I think we all walked into this environment, which had been very, you know, a very protected boys club for a very long time and that was just normal for us i think it wasn't until we got further along in the journeys that we started to compare notes again we were so few of us um that we didn't work in this particularly for creative women is yes there might be a creative team in every agency but you do this sort of roundabout that if one goes then you go take their job so you never actually got to work with other women um so yeah it was it was just we didn't know we when we came into the bit into the business we were never told the rules we were always playing on the slanted side with the sun in our eyes so we were all making it up as we went along um i came in my first job nobody would mentor me they wouldn't mentor a 20 you know a really beautiful 20 year old girl they didn't trust themselves to be in that environment so I went to my first shoot straight out of college not knowing what to do like no clue whatsoever because nobody would take me nobody would teach me what to do my first job I screwed up and cost the company so much money because nobody took my hand they just threw us in there and was like sink or swim when did it start to change and how much of a part did you do you feel was part of that change And it changed a lot.

7:03Australia was very different. So I was headhunted out from London to go to Australia by a headhunter who specialised in bringing, like, the future creative directors out from London. So I was very much sort of pinpointed, found as, like, a potential creative director. And this headhunter was amazing. She really, like, pushed for everybody. And in Australia, there were two or three creative teams in every agency. In 1990, under Kristen Munger, who was the greatest creative director I ever worked with, half of his creative department was female. So in the late 80s, early 90s, there was a massive move towards it.

7:47Then we started getting good. Then we started winning awards. And it was really interesting. In, I think, 2016, there was Leo Burnett hired five white senior male creatives. And there was absolute outrage. I think Cindy Gallop was like, what the fuck are you doing? And I was still in touch with all of the creatives, female creatives. Well, my Facebook direct messages just went mental. And we all started talking to each other for the first time. First of all, none of them had been approached for this job. None. But also, a number of them were starting to recognise just how they played the game.

8:35And they were all of a sudden realising that, hold on a minute, this has been rigged against me all the time, hasn't it? But we got together and we started talking and we started putting our clips together. And we put our clips together from 1995 and there was sarah barclay and mara marriage who won best ad of the last 20 years in that year um jane carrow and i won practically everything for the drive campaign which was revolutionary we then went georgia arnott had won this such and such had won this we'd won this we'd won this i mean it was really quite incredible when we put all of this together we went we actually dominated the awards that year didn't we and then all of us lost our career the next year every single one of us practically lost our careers so jane caro and i who'd who'd just done the drive campaign that was remade around the world so you know anybody who's a creative would know that if you're in australia and you get an ad that is remade in london and and South America.

9:40It's massive. It's massive. Yeah. So we were like, great, fantastic. We've always heard that when you have the big win, you have the meeting with your headhunter and, you know, it's like who wants to hire you, how big is your office going to be, how much money are you going to earn? We were greeted with the guys who got together and decided there'd never be a female creative director in Sydney, so forget it. I'm speechless. This was the headhunter that brought me out to be a creative director. This was the woman who, you know, made sure that I always had a job and, you know, went to the right places.

10:11So my response to that was, okay, well, I'm 35 years old. I'm going to give myself the job. So I bought myself, bought a massive great big warehouse, two and a half thousand square meter warehouse and started my business downstairs and started my family upstairs. so you know again when you talk about create courage it was like well if you're not i'm going to do this you're not going to stop me so i'm just gonna make it happen gonna make it happen and i did i had clients like maserati revlon i've created james squire beer um and was you know really about to become the female droga five but uh unfortunately my partner um at the time as the business grew I got lots of business managers and finance people and they all started in the books and one day they were like Jane do you realize that every mortgage is in your name but every single piece of property is in your partner's all of a sudden the two and a half thousand square meter warehouse became a smaller house with a stable block out the back and you know went from being a potential droga five to a little cottage industry and I for the next 10 years I basically all I did was beer um there's I think that's the thing at the time in the in the 2010s particularly was this idea of specialization that everybody does one thing well and so of course I was the beer goddess I'd created you know one of the world's first craft beers so I just got craft beer after craft beer after craft beer I was doing them in Singapore I was doing them in America um you know I was doing them in every state of Australia I don't drink beer I hate beer when I got the account I was pregnant they didn't find out that I didn't drink beer until 18 months later when I finished breastfeeding and they were like we'd have never given you the account if we'd known anyway so I got to the point of I can't do this anymore I'm really bored you know I'm trained to work on lots of different things not just one thing so that's why I came back to the UK my my eldest daughter is a really talented songwriter a singer songwriter and she got offered a place at the Brit school and my youngest was about to start high school so it was like well if we ever go back now's the time so that's what I did and then I took my maternity leave both of my children I'd had three days each with them they just came and plonked them on the edge of my desk if I was the boss I could do it and so I was like I'm going to take my maternity leave and went to the National Film and Television School and studied screenwriting.

12:45Courageous Leaders Podcast Host:It's probably one of the most powerful stories I've heard in a while thank you for just sharing that so beautifully as well the question that's coming up for me is how did you navigate and manage your emotional state going through all of that like the anger of being told that you weren't going to get this next big job the let down and disappointment and betrayal from your partner how did you emotionally cope with that okay so for me there's always been two levels of my life so there's the real level the the real world, but there's always been a really strong spiritual story over the top of it.

13:20So I think throughout my journey, you know, I've been on a 46-year spiritual journey. So for me, there was always these two levels. And for me also, there's always teachers. They say when the student's ready, the teacher will come. So I've always been working on these two levels, Even though these things have been happening in the real world, I've been trying to understand what's happening from above it. So when that was happening, my teacher was a shaman. She was Mamumji, the mother of mothers and the keeper of the sounds of the universe. And this woman was absolutely real. She would have Louis Farrakhan, the head of the Muslims in America, would bring her up and play the violin to her.

14:10she refused to meet the Dalai Lama because he didn't do enough for his people I mean she was the sort of person that when royals went they would go and see her she was absolutely incredible and the one thing that she always used to say that was always sat above my head and I think everybody should sit above their head right now as well everything's perfect now if you can get to the point that everything is perfect everything is you are exactly where you are supposed to be and everything that's happening is what is supposed to be happening to you. Then you can start to look at things of like, okay, all right, if this is perfect, where do I make the next move?

14:48What am I here for? What is the point of this? What am I here to learn? So yeah, that's what's always been sitting on top of it.

14:55Courageous Leaders Podcast Host:Just a quick reminder, if you haven't already, to please hit the like button and subscribe to the channel. It's a small action that makes a big difference. You'll be the first to know when new episodes drop and your support helps us create meaningful content for leaders like you. I'd also love to hear from you. So if you have any thoughts, questions or ideas, pop them into the comments. And if you're curious about how my leadership coaching or training could support you or your team, just drop me a DM and we'll set up a call. Thanks so much. Now let's get back to the episode. As human beings, we're striving for perfection so often, like the perfect this, the perfect meeting, the perfect presentation, the perfect podcast.

15:34and we say perfection doesn't actually exist but yes through your lens just going actually where I'm at right now is perfect and the thing that's coming up in my head is embracing the imperfection by allowing it to be perfect because you can choose whether it's perfect or not so if you

15:51Courageous Leaders Podcast Host:allow it to be just think what you could learn and do with that versus then I suppose the opposite you become a victim you lose yourself and yet you can spiral down is that a fair understanding of what I've heard. Absolutely. And I think as well, the longer you live, the more you realise that what you get versus what you want is usually better. So those things that you lose, those things that get dropped off, it might seem like an absolute disaster at the time, but it leads to this and that leads to that. And actually, would I be here at this time? So, you know, a lot of people sort of say, you know, about my ex, I mean, he put me through hell and still does to a certain extent.

16:37I mean, that's another reason why we're 12 ,000 miles on the other side of the world, is I wouldn't have these two children without him. I would not. So yes, he was horrendous. The price was horrendous. And, you know, yes, he took all of the money in the separation, but I got kids. And yeah, it's been really, really tough as a single mum. And, you know, financially I'm in a horrendous situation because of it but I got the kids and that's perfect for you they're the two most incredible in fact I was thinking about it this morning and I was like I wonder what sort of women they would be if I had if we had stayed if he if he'd caught them and you know I just was like no I can't even think that way because your environment affects so much

17:26Courageous Leaders Podcast Host:of who you become absolutely and your destiny so you then come back to the uk what happened then okay so 2015 i was starting my screenwriting career i was getting getting quite somewhere but also recognizing that probably money for it was probably still a few years away that i you know still had to do my 10 000 hours to be able to do it and coincidentally at the same time the figure came out that only 3 % of the world's creative directors were female. So I very loudly stuck my hand up of going, as probably the most ridiculously overqualified woman for the job, and was completely and utterly diggled, completely.

18:08I would have global creative directors telling their HR person to see me. They would make an appointment, cancel it, and never remake it. I would go and see headhunters who would be like, yes, we need female leadership so badly. and I would never hear back from them. I went to an event, honestly, it almost broke my heart. I went to an event where this woman had been taken from being a journalist at a newspaper to being creative director at Ogilvy and Mather. And she had just written an article for the newspaper basically saying, I've got no fucking idea what I'm doing, but they paid me lots of money and just wrote this whole sort of article about how ridiculous it was.

18:47I'm sitting in the audience almost in tears like almost in tears that what you are going to just give people the title that have got no experience but you completely and utterly ignore a woman over the age of 50 was devastating to me absolutely devastating um and the other thing on that one was somebody saying that there was a new that that in advertising now you couldn't say no to a client and I was like I don't know how to do my job if I can't say no to a client I thought that was i thought that was my job it's like alien isn't it that was just that was just such an alien concept to me because it was like that's not what we do we protect our ideas which include saying no to a client um but um so i mean i i tried to get a job for four years um and i was at the point where it was like i really don't care what sort of job i get but the actually i I mean, I went for interviews and one very top creative director, who you would be very surprised who it was, basically said to me, Jane, I'd give you a job, but you'd end up as the old woman at the back of the department doing the shit that nobody else wants.

19:56I had another one going, I wish I could remember this off by heart, but he said something like, you know, we're really interested in her 50-something, you know, sort of swagger or whatever it was, but she didn't have enough tech-friendly, digital da-da-da-da-da-da, and this whole list of terms that made like a spaghetti of technical terms. And I just was like, okay. And another one that was like, I went for a job that was well below me. And he said to me, Jane, I just think you'd be bored. And I said, I'd never get bored of putting a roof over my children's head. And that just went straight over.

20:33I mean, it was like he could not understand that somebody of my standing could go, you know, I'll be your head of copy. I'll proofread everybody's work. That's no problem. In 2019, I put out a tweet. I just woke up one morning. It was, I think, January 29th or something. I woke up in the morning and I was like, I wonder if there are actually any women over the age of 50 making ads in London. And it was retweeted 64 times with comments like hen's teeth and unicorn tears, easy to find. I got eight names, four of whom were working, four of whom weren't. I went and met these women. that they were amazing.

21:10They were just amazing. But also a little broken, some of them. And I just thought I was setting up a Humans of New York type thing, where I'd photograph this amazing woman, I'd tell her story, and we'd just sort of, you know, every week or every month, just tell a different woman's story. So over the next 40 days and 40 nights after the tweet, I built a website, I found 15 women, I photographed them, I wrote their stories, I created all the social media campaign Got a bit of PR And in the first two weeks The hashtag had 2 million views Then the email started coming in I used to be a PR whiz Now I'm driving a bus I was a VR director for the BBC I'm now wiping the arse of an Alzheimer's patient I was one of the world's first rejays I am now applying for jobs as hotel maids And it became absolutely apparent that there was an explosion of unemployment for midlife women.

22:10That might have not been as much of a problem when we had a lifespan that we were expected to live till we were 72, but it's a massive fucking problem when we're going to be living till 90 to 100. We're basically having half of our lives wiped out. And also what was happening is it was so normal that even we were expecting it to happen. So whenever there was a round of redundancies, every single woman was

22:33Courageous Leaders Podcast Host:like well i'm over 45 i've gone and i know it's just happened to other people usually well what's happening at the moment is actually even more terrifying so what's happening at the moment is there are no entry-level jobs and they're getting rid of women 45 plus so 25 of those will be single mothers okay like my situation i've got a 23 and a 26 year old both of them are out of work i mean you know this is supposed to be the time for me this is supposed to be the time when i build up for my retirement. This is the first chance I've actually had in my whole life to be able to save for retirement.

23:08I can't. I can't downsize. I can't do anything. I'm still looking after adult children. There's no benefits for it. And if I'm suffering, I know that other women are suffering too. So in the same way, as you sort of said, what is the everything's perfect? When I started campaigning for midlife women, I ended up evicted. I ended up broke. I ended up at the food bank and I remember sitting there at the food bank with this lovely Christian woman saying prayers for me and I looked around and I realized I was the only woman that could get out of there and so I just sat there and went I'm going to make sure that no other woman like me ends up in this situation and so at the moment what is absolutely terrifying me is that if we have no if ai is taking all of the the the young people's jobs all the entry-level jobs and any woman over the age of 45 is being made redundant we've we're going to have two generations that are connected directly connected living in poverty we're already women already have 30 of the pension savings of men we're already facing a really really tough retirement but this is just killing as this gives us no opportunity to get out of it.

24:27I think that this is a massive emergency that we should all be really seriously looking at now because it's going to end up with suicide. I mean, women 55 plus are already the highest group of female suicides. This is going to get worse and worse and worse. And we're going to see that this is going to be the first group that are going to be really, really severely facing poverty. There's no other word for it.

24:56Courageous Leaders Podcast Host:And do you think anyone's listening to that or paying attention to that? I think it's so new. I think it's really something that's happened in the last few weeks. Is that recent? It's this recent. I think the reports are coming out about just how few entry-level jobs are. And you can see it. My eldest daughter is 26. She's been in a job for three years, so she's not brand, brand new to it. but the jobs that she does most of the people above her could now get AI to do it and you know when you talk to people it was like yeah when I started out my job I was doing contact reports or when I started out my job I was doing this so a lot of those learn the job roles are gone because the the hard work of them or the dog you know the donkey work of them's been done so that's that's why it's happening at the lower level and then there's this perception at the that is so wrong at the other end that we can't keep up with tech that you know we're not going to learn ai that you know absolutely mad ridiculous assumption but nobody's sort of looking at things societally um which is again a lot of what i'm doing at the moment um i launched microsoft word version one I've launched every single piece of tech as it has come along and I see I can see all the same attitudes I can see all the same fears I can see all the same conversations happening with AI as happened at the start of computing the thing that I am sort of heartened by is I don't think more people I've never seen as many people talking about what is this going to do to us as before I think everything else just sort of came through like, wow, this is amazing.

26:46What is this? What's happening? I think we've seen it enough times, especially with the start of social media that came out and was totally unregulated and the damage that that did. I think people are starting to see with AI and robotics and all of this coming in, what a difference it's going to make. What I am concerned about and what I think that one of the things I'm saying at the moment is the matriarch should take the lead. and I think the reason why the matriarchs can take the lead is that we've not only seen the tech but we've seen the effects that it has on society so and I remember in 1983 working on the launch of Microsoft Word 1 there was a floppy disk with a game on it well it was so much easier to put that into the console than it was to try and learn how to use the body computer my copywriter got so addicted within the first I've never seen anything so addictive in all my life and I look at it now and I go why didn't we pick that up why didn't we see that this was as addictive as any drug with these computer games but we were so sort of like enamored by look what they can do and aren't they amazing that we sort of like let that ride and I think we've seen all of these things we've made mistakes with it too societally so I think you know we're a really important part in this conversation because we know the societal effects that have happened so yeah so for people

28:12Courageous Leaders Podcast Host:listening I know we spoke before like you shared to me because it's what's so lovely is you articulate your views so clearly um and I know you said to me that you do have this ability to see what's coming and that served you in your life and I think you can very clearly see what's on the way and you mentioned there how the matriarch you need to set the lead what would that look like? So first of all on the being able to see the future I'm 63 years old I now have enough empirical evidence to prove it I mean I was brought in to Kodak to tell them what digital was going to be and they didn't listen they didn't understand they didn't couldn't comprehend it so this was 1993 and they were like come on Jane please tell me what is digital I went okay tell it me like it's a cup of coffee and he like looked at a cup of coffee and I'm like okay looks like coffee smells like coffee tastes like coffee no cup and he just went yeah i i give up i don't get it i don't get it but i've wondered whether 13 years later when the iphone came out that he recognized what no cup was that he just so the future does come through but in it's i always sort of say it's like somebody playing charades is that you can sort of see this sort of stuff coming again i had in 2020 i mean it was so funny coming up to 2020 every client wanted their 2020 sorry 2010 everybody wanted their 2020 vision it was like every brief was what's the 2020 vision what was and every time i did one there was told it was bullshit um i had another one panadol were asked me what's the 2020 vision and i was like people will do aromatherapy they will do acupuncture you know they will do all of these alternate therapies for a headache I got hauled in to my managing director's office asking what drugs I was on because like they just couldn't see what it was so I've got enough empirical evidence no I can't tell you what's going to happen in the future but I can sort of feel what and again I think that comes from this having this spiritual level above it and trying to understand that as I'm trying to understand life.

30:23And I've sort of got to a point where it was like, I do start to understand that. So first of all, what is a matriarch? A matriarch is my senior woman in whatever situation she's in. So it's not about motherhood. It's actually about seniority, who's got the most experience. So you could be a matriarch at 19. You don't have to, it's interesting. I've had a lot of people going, oh, I'm waiting to become a matriarch. It was like, honey, you're there. so a woman over 50 in europe is 28 of the european population if she has a partner and two children she has loving direct influence over 112 of the population so um i made a mistake when i was campaigning for midlife women because i thought midlife women was a great way of describing us women love it.

31:13They love the term midlife women because it feels as though they've got half a life to live. It wasn't until last year that I realised that men see midlife as a crisis. And I look at how midlife is now portrayed and it's treated as a crisis. Oh, you've got perimenopause. Oh, you've got this. I mean, I warned at the start of it that we're going to create a new stereotype, which is actually going to make things worse. And I do believe that has happened. I do believe it's become a crisis. But the word matriarch is absolutely parallel, equal to a patriarch. I do not believe there is a family on this earth where the male, the patriarch is more powerful than the matriarch, very, very rarely.

31:58So I think in this day and age, I think we should take the claim of being the matriarch. And the matriarch has the best interests of everybody at heart. Again, language has made this a bad word. To the English, a matriarch is the cold, stuffy old cow that is manipulating everybody's affairs and holding out her inheritance. Nothing is further from the truth. There's only two species on earth that go through menopause, us and whales, and only orca whales and pilot whales, I think it is. now we've finally caught up with the age range of whales so I think we should start carrying on with what they do so when a woman when a whale goes through menopause she becomes the leader of the pod and the reason she becomes the leader of the pod is because she cares about every single member of that pod every single child in that pod is from her or her sisters and so she has everybody's best interests at heart.

32:59And I think when the patriarchy is in such a state of absolute madness, which again, I go, everything's perfect. They're breaking it all up. They're smashing it up themselves. We do not need to smash the patriarchy at all. What we need to do is design what comes next, what it looks like, what is happening, you know, clean up the mess and let's fix this like don't moan fix it is my mantra um i think as matriarchs we should go actually you know what don't moan how are we going to fix this world because we're all feeling very very helpless at the moment and i think if we come into our power and also recognize that the patriarchy has only existed for 1.3 percent of human history now that is you know it seems impossible to dismantle the patriarchy doesn't it you think that's an impossible it couldn't possibly happen but if you actually look in terms of the whole of human history it's only 1.3 percent of that now if you were a woman in ancient mesopotamia you're the first woman with the with the right to write the first known author was eduana and a priestess who wrote to the goddesses which is why we still know about the goddesses because they've been tried to they've that's the first thing the patriarch got rid of was the divine feminine.