**Business Book Awards 2024: Diversity, Inclusion & Equality Book of the Year**

**The People’s Book Prize 2023/24 Shortlisted Title**

There’s one group consistently ignored in most companies’ diversity strategies, but which could be your business’s secret weapon.

Professional women over 50 are faced with a triple-whammy of discrimination: they are not male, young, or linear in their career paths. As a result, they are leaving corporate life and taking their career into their own hands. And with it, they take their abundant wisdom, energy and ambition.

Drawing on new research by Dr Lucy Ryan that fills a longstanding data gap, this book shows that assumptions about declining midlife motivation and energy just aren’t true for women and reveals how you can retain and develop this invaluable talent pool with a better understanding of their challenges and a few simple changes.

Professional women have transformed our world. And women over 50 are deserving of your attention and ready to step up in your business.

Dr Lucy Ryan is a leadership coach, consultant, author and passionate advocate for women’s professional development. Her doctoral research project explored the phenomenon of midlife for professional women, a long-standing data gap, and she works with companies internationally to unlock the potential of this key talent pool.