If every woman in the world woke up one morning, slapped herself on the forehead and said "I am fine just the way I am", entire economies would crumble.

When I said this a few years ago on The Gruen Transfer, it got quite a response. For a year or two afterwards, strangers would wryly slap themselves on the forehead when they saw me.

That reaction has since stopped, but the sentiment remains true to this day. Huge multinational enterprises are built entirely upon the exploitation of female insecurity, particularly the fear of growing old.

However, as someone who has not only crossed the Rubicon of 50, but is on the threshold of the unthinkable (60), I am here to tell the women of the world: fear not. Most of them, anyway.

I was on The Drum last week with three other women of my vintage talking about some of the key issues that affect Australian women over 50, including ageing, work, money and relationships.

Once again, the program generated a huge response — particularly on social media — from viewers who were thrilled to see the spotlight turned on this under-discussed demographic.

Women this age, wrote one woman on Facebook, are simply "forgotten" by policymakers; there was just not enough time for a panel to cover it all.

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Yet somehow, the fact that older women like to see themselves in the media, like to listen to people discussing their lives, and now constitute a largely untapped market, still seems to fly below the radar.

We aren't sexy to marketers, programmers and editors and so they forget that we are sexy to ourselves.

Indeed, many 50-something women relish this stage of their life — enjoying grandparenthood, extra leisure time and a newfound sense of self-assurance.

But for too many Australian women, growing older brings a confronting set of challenges that have nothing to do with how they look or feel.

Many are struggling with underemployment, financial stress and homelessness — the legacy of a lifetime of sexism, and one that bites particularly hard for women who ironically did what they were told.

The unexpected 'bonuses' of life after 50

Certainly, for many women, landing on the "wrong side" of 50 brings unexpected bonuses. We stop having periods, and there is simply no negative to that.

Our children, if we have had any, grow up and leave home. We may even begin to experience the delights of grandchildren (and, as a new grandmother myself, let me assure you they really are delightful).

And, just as we stop physically caring for other people, many of us also stop — at last — caring what anyone else thinks about us, especially how we look.

If (and it's a big if) we are fortunate enough to be financially secure, we finally have the time and the money to put our own needs first for a change and do what we want.

That's why women over 50 flock to writers' festivals, art classes, yoga, pilates and aqua-aerobics. It's why we swell the audiences at cinemas (hint to film-makers: we'd go to even more if you made them about us), theatres, musicals, book clubs, travel, cruises and resorts.

But for the women who are not so fortunate, their disadvantage has been compounded.

The lifetime cost of being expected to do the lion's share of caring for others is too high for all of us, but for some women the price is unpayable.

For them, turning 50 can bring with it a sense of dread that puts worrying about wrinkles and sagging chins in the shade.

Feminism is an incomplete project

It is when women turn 50 (as it is for men) that their ability to remain employed becomes shaky.

If they are in low-paid, relatively low-skilled occupations, losing their job can be a disaster.

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If they have spent their working lives in such jobs — and remember, girls of my generation were often overtly encouraged not to bother with tertiary training because they would marry, have kids and their husband would support them — they will have very little between them and poverty.

They don't have much superannuation (women retire with roughly half as much super as men: $105,000, on average, compared with men's $197,000), are too old for the job market, too young for the pension and not eligible for any kind of disability support.

If they don't own their own home or have sold it to live off the proceeds (what else do you do when you have no income?), a rent rise or increase in electricity prices can tip them into homelessness.

Indeed, the fastest-growing group among the homeless is women over 55.

That is why feminism is not just a privileged, middle-class white ladies' indulgence. Feminism looks at the structures of inequality that handicap women for their whole lives and, tragically, come home to roost when they are at their most vulnerable.

Feminism is an incomplete project. For some women of my generation it has helped us gain an independence that our mothers and grandmothers only dreamt of.

For other women, particularly those who thought they had no need for feminism when young, a sexist society has left them literally out in the cold.