It’s commonly believed that women are far more likely than men to be victims of ageism in the workplace, but new numbers suggest otherwise.
Fairygodboss a career site for women, recently surveyed 1000 people over the age of forty to find out how many have encountered ageism in the workplace, what it looks like, and whether men or women are more likely to run into it.
Encouragingly, it found that the majority of respondents (72%) had not been affected by ageism. However, among the people who had felt some age-related discrimination, men and women reported fairly similar experiences. Among men, 13% said they believe their advanced age kept them from being hired; 12% of women said the same thing. Nearly equal numbers of men and women said a co-worker had made a negative remark, joking or not, about their age.
Probably the most depressing finding from the questionnaire was that most people who had sensed ageism at work noticed it before their 45th birthday.
Respondents were also asked if they had ever lied about their age, fearing, one supposes, that having some life experience and seniority in the field would be held against them. Only 4% of people said they had. (In this tiny sub-population, people didn’t just fudge their age by a year or two, but rather, most commonly, by three to ten years).
Rather than outright fib, more employees were likely to report taking steps to just look younger. Still, gender did not dictate who was more likely to get botox or dress differently. Admittedly, women were 1.8 times more likely to colour their hair, but the differences between the sexes was otherwise negligible.
Unsurprisingly, older employees were most often stereotyped as less tech-savvy and less able or interested in change and learning, in the respondents’ observations. But that’s if they were stereotyped at all; 53% of people said they hadn’t run into any of the clichés that were listed as possibilities.
Three out of four respondents said they do not fear being “pushed out” at work before they are ready to leave, which sounds positive. But that still leaves a quarter of respondents feeling insecure as the years go by.
Demographics may be on the elders’ side: The oldest millennials are two years away from 40. As that generation accumulates wrinkles and age spots, they may very well insist that attitudes toward the 40-and-over crowd simply adjusts, and the sheer heft of their numbers could actually make it happen.
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