Women of the Greatest Generation Modeled the Concept of Encore Careers

Later-life careers that are meaningful

Dear Ellie:

I keep hearing the term “encore career” lately. What is an encore career, and where did that term come from? Sydney

Dear Sydney:

The term was coined by Marc Freedman, founder of Civic Ventures and author of Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life (PublicAffairs, 2007). Marc also wrote

Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America, in 1999, and

The Kindness of Strangers: Adult Mentors, Urban Youth, and the New Voluntarism, in 1993.

I had the pleasure of hearing Marc speak a few years ago in Denver,
when the Rose Community Foundation was launching its Boomers Leading
Change initiative. He was very articulate and approachable. After his
presentation, he sold and signed his books.

In Encore, Marc says:

“The book tells the story of an incipient movement of individuals who
embody a powerful alternative, who are living out a distinct and
compelling vision of work in the second half of life, one built around
the dream of an ‘encore career’ at the intersection of continued
income, new meaning, and significant contribution to the greater good.
It is a dream with the potential to work at once for individuals, for
employers, for our nation’s fiscal health, and for society more
broadly.”

Marc is devoted to the concept of public service and volunteerism, with
which I agree. He has also shaped the idea of later-life careers that
are meaningful, with which I also agree. However, as a male in his 40s,
he seems to think that the baby boomer generation, of which he is a
member, is the first group to discover multiple careers and work that have intrinsic meaning or public service characteristics.

In my view, he has not adequately examined women’s career paths,
especially those of the Greatest Generation middle-class women, who are
now over 60. Many of those women are still working, and they are often
working in careers that have intrinsic meaning and have public service
components. Indeed, it is my conviction that the model for 21st century
encore careers is the Greatest Generation women, who both led and lived
out the second feminist movement, combined child-rearing with full-time
employment, and have been deeply involved in community and political
activism.

For our book, A Time of Our Own: In Celebration of Women Over Sixty (Fulcrum
Publishing, 2008), my co-author, Fay Whitney, and I interviewed 40
Greatest Generation women who ranged in age from 59½ to 94, all of whom
had careers that now would be called encore careers. These women are
typical of American middle-class women who were active in the civil
rights and women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s. They have surely
set the pace for the type of career patterns now being attributed to
the baby boomers.

Although Marc Freedman does not acknowledge these women—now in the
third third of their lives—as the pioneers of “encore careers,” they,
in fact, are the true pacesetters.

The important thing about this evolving societal pattern is that the
traditional “up-over-and-out” linear career paths are no longer
relevant or realistic. As our healthy lives have lengthened and the
economic recession continues, we will all be working for more years
than we expected when we were younger. Not only is the income
important, but the values embedded in our work make meaningful work a
critical mental health issue. This will increasingly be true for both
men and women. A whole new image of our career lives is emerging. Ellie

By Elinor Miller Greenberg, EdD
Dear Ellie Blog