A New Category Of Colleague In The Workplace: Queenagers

They got their start in the 1980s, paving the way for a new generation of women.

In ongoing discussion over the progress women have made - and still need to make - in the work place, one key group is often overlooked.  Meet the Queenagers, women in midlife who began their careers in the 1980's, the decade when the "glass ceiling" was first identified and when breaking through it became a possible if incredibly difficult-to-achieve goal for ambitious, corporate women.Now, many of those senior female executives are leaving the workforce. In rejecting unsatisfactory jobs they also debunk the working assumption that one size fits all for every phase of a working woman's life.

To understand the challenges ahead for women today it's crucial to consider what queenagers have accomplished and how the playing field has shifted since they first made inroads into a male-dominated business world. Queenagers range in age from about 65 all the way down to 45. These women typically have relatively high incomes and a high degree of freedom in the choices they're now making, either because they have moved beyond their child rearing years or because they chose not to have children in the first place. 

Noon, a website dedicated to serving this group, coined the term queenagers and describes the group as being in "the age of opportunity." Unlike their younger colleagues having babies and bringing up families, with every spare penny eaten up by childcare, queenagers enjoy a high degree of autonomy and spending. But above all they prize freedom.