Noisy Older Women: Sue The Workaround Woman

Published on 09 July 2026

Meet Sue. Sue is one of ten women participating in Noisy Older Women (NOW), an art project to celebrate and raise the voices of older women in our community.

For much of her life, Sue has had to find workarounds to navigate systems and attitudes that expected women to stay quiet. As the wife of a Military serviceman, she spent years living in Defence bases across Australia where she felt the pressure to remain invisible.

“You have to keep moving, so you never put down roots. You just had to pack up the house and the family and go to where they wanted to send you next, and to be so careful to not say or do anything that would reflect badly on the Military”.

When Les retired after nearly 15 years in the Military he said that it was her turn to build the career that she wanted. Sue quickly encountered gender barriers in agriculture. Despite earning the highest marks at agricultural college, she was told she couldn’t be named dux because influential farming families expected male graduates to receive the recognition and career opportunities that followed.

Rather than give up, Sue found the workarounds and forged her own path in a career she was passionate about, becoming a respected leader in the thoroughbred industry and later being recognised as 2005 Victorian Agriculture Woman of the Year. When years later the same college invited her back to deliver the valedictory address, she seized the opportunity to challenge the attitudes that had once excluded her.

In 2023, after 14 years in her job, during a restructure meeting she was told “We didn’t realise how old you were” and at 63, she watched male colleagues of similar experience and age move into advisory and leadership roles while no such opportunities existed for her. “I’m standing there, a similar age with exactly the same skills and knowledge as these men, but there was no sideways for me, I was out of a job”.

Losing her job took her straight back to her days as a Military wife, and that dark sense of feeling silenced and invisible again.

Today, through volunteering and the Noisy Older Women (NOW) project, Sue is determined to challenge the attitudes that have sought to sideline her for much of her life. “I don’t want to be silenced. I don’t want to be invisible,” she says. “If even one thing changes for the older women coming behind me, then I’d feel that I have made a difference”.

Sue is participating in the Noisy Older Women art project to celebrate and raise the voices of older women in our community.