menopausal and washed up

Davina is single, 50, on disability payments and has been going through a really bad menopause for several years. She considers herself 'washed up' and gets very angry when people quote improved unemployment figures and suggest it's about time she gets a job.

"The unemployment figures are doctored," say Davina. "They don't give the real picture and they hide many washed up men and women of all ages - not just the over 50s - with or without health problems."

"When you include mature-aged students, working aged people on various welfare allowances and pensions, the underemployed and those who are out of the system being supported by their families," adds Davina, "the true unemployment figure is closer to 30% of the workforce and is nowhere near the 5% or under that the government figures say."

"I'm not a deadbeat," says Davina. "I'm just washed up - considered unemployable by employers. Drop in to your local welfare office and you'll see for yourself who the washed up are. Most are well-dressed and well-educated men and women just like you and I, but they're older people generally, of course, and most are suffering some crisis or other at home or having health problems."

"It angers me why the government is deliberately hiding the true facts about unemployment and causing so many decent people to become unfairly marginalized and victimized."

"There are not enough jobs available for everyone of working age and many of those who are working are underemployed in part-time jobs or working on short-term contracts that land them back on welfare."

"Also, the vast majority of advertised positions are churned jobs," says Davina. "They go to people already in jobs."

"Without influential and supportive friends and families, many people who find themselves suddenly unemployed really have no hope of secure re-employment - especially if they are over 50," says Davina, "and the picture is worse for anyone with a disability."

"I'm really upset when people sneer at me and say that my health problem shouldn't stop me from working," says Davina. "Sure, there are jobs out there that don't require standing or running around - but they don't go to people like me. They go to people without mobility problems."

"I'm not on disability for nothing," snaps Davina. "I spent nearly two years looking for suitable work before giving up. What with terrible menopausal symptoms on top of a mobility problem I just couldn't cope any more. Thousands of women go mental at menopause, and there's good reason they do. It's a terrible time for a woman."

"If people can't offer the washed up a job, starting Monday at 8am," says Davina, "then it's useless and cruel to tell them to go out and find a job."

"Does it ever occur to these smart asses that people become washed up as a result of having already spent a year or more tramping the streets looking for a job?"

"When I was working I never begrudged my tax dollars going towards supporting people on welfare," says Davina, "and if people get shitty because I've got cable and they don't - and I'm home all day and they're not - then they should think again."

"I'd rather have a job and the government welfare officers can change places with me any day - but when I ask them whether they're prepared to give up their job and give it to me they won't do it. Why? If it's so easy to get a job then they wouldn't have any trouble finding another one, would they? They won't give up their job to the washed up because they are scared like hell of being washed up themselves."

"What I spend my welfare check on is my business - and the few luxuries I have merely make my miserable existence more bearable."

"If the government can't provide full employment for everybody then I believe it has a duty of care towards the washed up," says Davina. "I would even go so far as to say that it should provide gratis some sort of soma for them in the form of a drug or entertainment."

"Because none of us know when our number is up work wise," says Davina, "it makes more sense to give our tax dollar to the washed up than have it end up in some political slush fund or be given to some corporate welfare grabber or be spent in some alien country."

"When the government not only deliberately fudges the true state of unemployment but also encourages the general population to vilify anyone not in gainful employment," says Davina, "it is trying to take the heat off the true state of the economy and where the tax dollars are really going."

"If all the mature-aged students, working aged people on various non-unemployment welfare allowances and pensions and those who are out of the system being supported by their families were included in the next unemployment figure," says Davina, "the nation would have a wake-up call worse than an earthquake!"

"The government doesn't want that happening, so the bureaucrats fudge the figures and pretend there are plenty of jobs out there and by implication that means that anyone not working is a lazy layabout or a deadbeat."

"If we didn't have welfare," says Davina, "half our nation would be begging on the streets."

"Maybe that's what we need to happen in order for the rest of the nation - those in jobs - to understand that the unemployment figure is a hell of a lot more than what the government tells us."

"Leave me alone will ya," shouts Davina, "I'm menopausal and mad as hell!"


(Davina's story first appeared as fudged unemployment figures and is reprinted with permission.)