I used to judge women for hiding their age – until my own age was used against me - CNA Lifestyle

In her 20s, the writer thought keeping your age private was silly. Now, she understands why some women choose to do so: Revealing your age can give people a reason to judge your work, appearance and relevance before they know you.

Knowing a woman’s age can shape how others see her competence at work, appearance and relevance. (Photo: iStock/Miljan Zivkovic)

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Simone Wu 30 Sep 2026 07:34AM Bookmark Bookmark Share WhatsApp Telegram Facebook Twitter Email LinkedIn Set CNA as your preferred source on Google Add CNA as a trusted source to help Google better understand and surface our content in search results. Read a summary of this article on FAST. Get bite-sized news via a newcards interface. Give it a try. Click here to return to FAST Tap here to return to FAST FAST A couple of years ago, after finishing a maternity-cover contract managing a small team, my younger colleagues shared their honest feedback with me. One comment stood out: They had expected me – their new manager in her 40s – to be stuffy and stern.

Two were in their 20s, one in her early 30s. I was 43 then, and that number had already shaped their ideas about me before we worked together. But they told me they were relieved to be wrong.

Being on the receiving end of that assumption made two things click at once: why some women would rather not reveal their age – and how quickly I had once judged them for not doing so.

When I was in my 20s, I didn’t understand why some women kept their age private. It seemed unnecessary, maybe even a bit dishonest. To me, age was just a fact, so why hide it?

Throughout my 20s and 30s, I worked at women’s lifestyle magazines and often interviewed women in their 40s and older. I admired them. They were accomplished, confident, and comfortable in ways I wasn’t yet. That’s exactly why their secrecy confused me.

I remember interviewing a successful woman – easily the most interesting person I’d spoken to that month. When she asked me, gently but firmly, not to include her age, I was genuinely baffled and thought her request came from insecurity.

To me, her age showed all she had achieved. I didn’t realise she knew something I hadn’t learned yet: That once people knew her age, they might judge those achievements differently.

Instead of seeing what she had accomplished on its own terms, they would measure them against where they thought a woman of her age should already be in her career or life.

Looking back, the irony is obvious. I was working inside the very system that creates age anxiety, writing skincare features about creams, serums and the idea of turning back time.

I thought I was celebrating great women, but I didn’t see that I was creating the very pressure that made them want to hide their ages in the first place.

Reality hit four years ago. A recruiter contacted me about a job for a fast-growing social e-commerce company in Singapore. She praised my experience and background.

But as soon as my age – 41 at that time – came up, her tone changed. She sounded hesitant and almost apologetic. Her client, she said, wanted someone younger.

When I asked how they expected someone to have over 15 years of experience and still be a decade younger than me, she agreed it was ridiculous but said it was a strict requirement from the client.

That was the first time my age closed a door for me. Her client wanted everything my years of experience had taught me, just without the years.

Once I noticed it, I realised how often we use age as a shortcut to judge others.

When I worked in corporate marketing, I had direct managers and global heads who were five to 10 years younger than me.

As a newcomer navigating a different industry, I wanted to be careful not to step on any toes. I never asked their age directly, but I engaged in a bit of birth-year profiling – checking their LinkedIn profiles to decode how I ought to speak to them.

I felt I needed that number to decide how to act as an older subordinate: Smart enough to do my job, but not so smart that I made them feel uncomfortable. As soon as I deduced their age, it shaped how I spoke and how much of my background I shared.

“People naturally organise social information into categories. This helps us process a complicated environment quickly, but it can also lead us to mistake a shortcut for an accurate understanding of the individual,” said Gabrielle-Beth Volovsky, a psychotherapist and counsellor at Talk Your Heart Out, a therapy and counselling service in Singapore.

I wondered if other women felt this same pressure, so I started asking around.

Yasmin Bentgen, a financial adviser in her 30s, stopped sharing her age five years ago.

“I’ve never believed age determines competence,” she told me. “In finance, credibility is judged instantly. The moment people know your number, their assumptions shift, and the number becomes the focus instead of the value you deliver.

“I would rather be recognised for my work, the relationships I’ve built, and the impact I’ve had on my clients than be defined by a number.”

Sometimes, it’s about physical appearance. The pressure on women to look young is everywhere, and sharing your age can feel like handing people a checklist to grade how well you’ve aged.

Ever since she started working in Singapore at 18, stylist Ho Chuen Lai has grown used to people guessing her age. In fact, it was precisely the relentless guessing that drove her to start taking serious care of her skin in the first place.

Now in her 40s, she sees how loaded those moments really are. “In many cultures, youth is heavily tied to attractiveness and vitality,” she said. “So when someone assumes you are older than you are, particularly when you have put time and effort into your health and appearance, it can feel like a judgement on how you look.”

Whether the setting is professional or personal, once you reveal your age, others start building a story about you, deciding what you should wear, how far you can go in your career, or whether you’re still relevant.

Worse, that number becomes the default reason for everything. When my Gen Alpha son uses slang that I have to ask him to explain, he tells me, matter-of-factly, that I’m old. And it doesn’t bother me in the least. How could it? The slang simply isn’t from my generation.

But in the wider world, missing a pop-culture reference, a new app or a viral trend is rarely seen as a simple oversight – it’s treated as proof that you’re out of touch and the world has passed you by.

As Volovsky explains, age can become the story through which everything else is interpreted: “The behaviour has not changed, but the story surrounding it has.”

Which brings me back to my former colleagues. Their initial assumption that I had to be rigid wasn’t borne out of malice. But assuming a manager in her 40s will be stuffy relies on the exact same logic as assuming a woman who keeps her age private is vain: both decide a woman’s story before giving her the chance to tell it herself.

As I approach 45, I still tell people my age without much thought. To me, it remains a simple fact, and I see no reason to change how I operate. But I no longer see my transparency as a sign of superior honesty – which is precisely the kind of smug judgment I would have made 20 years ago.

What I’ve realised is that both choices are about the same thing: a woman deciding for herself how she wants to be seen.

For some, saying their age out loud is a small act of defiance, a way of saying, “This is how old I am, and I refuse to hide it.” For others, like Bentgen, the power is in keeping it private, not letting a number show up before she does.

The point isn’t to convince women to choose one approach over the other, but to create a world where either choice carries fewer assumptions – ideally, none.

“The broader aim should not be to convince people, particularly women, to reveal their age. It should be to reduce the social penalties attached to ageing, while also respecting a person’s right to decide what they disclose,” said Volovsky.

That’s the world I would like to live in. But by writing this, I’ve shared my age with you too, and you’re free to build your own story about who I am and what I can do. I just hope that this time, you notice yourself doing it.

CNA Women is a section on CNA Lifestyle that seeks to inform, empower and inspire the modern woman. If you have women-related news, issues and ideas to share with us, email CNAWomen [at] mediacorp.com.sg.

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