You're listening to the BBC World Service.

My name is Julia Pascal, and as an older woman working

as a playwright and theatre director,

I want to explore why and how the mature woman

is rarely considered worthy of being center stage

on all levels of society around the world.

There's a touching moment in my own mother's life

when after 60 years, she was about to meet a former boyfriend,

and she backed out saying, no, he will see me as old

and wrinkled not as I was at 20.

Her sorrow at her loss of youthful beauty

had a sense of tragedy to it.

This concourse was women to go into a kind of hiding

as my mother did.

Capitalizing on women's pressure to remain young,

cosmetic houses make huge profits

on so-called anti-aging products, always targeted at women.

I explore the different ways in which women

are marginalised as they age, or were still punished.

There is a deeply disturbing account of murder

based on accusations of witchcraft in Kenya

that is graphic, and you may find this upsetting.

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