Kathy* once prided her work in sales and customer support in the car industry in Perth. Then, as she says bluntly, she got older. Bit by bit, she found herself being edges out of the showroom. Younger, attractive women took her place. "Even if you've got experience, all they want is eye candy."
Now retraining in a new industry, she is facing an uncertain future. After fleeing domestic violence, she lives in an old, run down rental - a far cry from her previous home. Turning 50 in October, she wonders what the future holds for women like her, living alone and with meagre savings.
At 79, Beryl* is a generation older than Katy. A lifelong homemaker, she counts her blessings; she owns her own small home in Mandurah, Perth, and has a measure of financial stability thanks to her pensions. She's keenly aware, however, of how precarious life can be for older women. Hers is the generation that suffered entrenched, systematic gender discrimination: "when I got married in 1963, that was it - married women couldn't work for the state government."
Even if you've got experience, all they want is eye candy.
Now as her cohort enters old age, it is deeply unfair so many fear the indignity of homelessness, she says.
Having safe, affordable and secure housing is a . A roof over your head is increasingly out of reach for some, however.
Australia's ageing population, high cost of housing, and significant gap in wealth accumulation between men and women attributable to the gender wage gap, lower incomes in female-dominated industries, family violence, women's traditional caring responsibilities and disproportionate impact of age discrimination on women in the workplace as found in the , is fuelling a national homelessness epidemic.
, the number of women aged 65-75 describing themselves as homeless increased by 51 per cent in the five years to 2016.
The net is increasingly scooping up younger women like Kathy: women over the age of 45 are one of the fastest growing groups of people who are homeless in Australia. An over the age of 45 were at risk of housing affordability stress and subsequently becoming homeless, according to the At Risk policy report from Housing for the Aged Action Group (HAAG) and Social Ventures Australia.
As actress Noni Hazlehurst says in an episode examining age discrimination in SBS's upcoming What Does Australia Really Think About? "it feels like we are sleepwalking into a national crisis."
From workplace discrimination to negative stereotypes of older Australians as incompetent and feeble, age discrimination is rife across the nation. For older women, a society hostile to age is a particular minefield - as is borne out in one of the show's most emotionally hard-hitting segments, an experiment on the predictive risk of homelessness led by the chief executive of Reimagining Home, Liz Lennon.
Lennon leads the twelve participants including Kathy and Beryl through a number of steps with the risk of homelessness increasing according to variables such as not having a savings buffer of at least six months, a lack of family support, household composition, number of dependents, partnership status, percentage of income spent on rent, work patterns, the expectation of an inheritance, and superannuation - less superannuation than men; Lennon herself has none.
According to census data, the number of women aged 65-75 describing themselves as homeless increased by 51 per cent in the five years to 2016.
Age Discrimination Commissioner Dr Kay Patterson attributes it to "the compounding factors of women working in industries and professions with lower rates of pay, such as health care, aged care and education, and to taking career breaks or working part-time due to caring responsibilities."
"Older women are more likely than older men to be perceived as having outdated skills, being too slow to learn new things or as someone who would deliver an unsatisfactory job."
While she's far happier now in her new rental compared to her violence-affected previous living conditions, finding herself at such a high risk of homelessness was deeply confronting for Kathy.
She's keenly aware that her landlord could eject her at any time into a private rental market with little affordable housing for older single women. "The thought is definitely there."
means that national social housing supply has effectively halved since 1990s.
Kathy wishes there was a comprehensive government-regulated national rent-to-buy scheme that would make it easier for women like her with proven rental records to get onto the property ladder.
For Beryl, practical measures such as these needed to be part of a wider shift in the way we look at age; not as a liability but an asset - older people represent a wealth of knowledge and experience, she stresses.
She'd also like to see programs encouraging financial literacy specifically tailored to women earlier in their working lives. "Education, savings and independence are so important."
*Surnames have been withheld for privacy
What Does Australia Really Think About...premieres 8:30pm Wednesday, 18 August on SBS and SBS On Demand. The three-part series continues weekly. Episodes will be repeated at 10:15pm Mondays on SBS VICELAND from 23 August.
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