Ageism and Old White Male Privilege
We’ve discovered that launching a business advocating the value and benefit of creating age neutral workforces is sometimes not as straightforward as we imagined. Our attention has been drawn to a view that a bigger issue than the existence of workplace ageism is actually the preponderance of expensive older white males clinging to privileged power positions slowing the career progression of talented young workers. Talk about flipping your business proposition on its head. Nonetheless, the existence of such a perspective highlights the workplace complexities that need to be addressed if age neutral workforces are to become a reality.
In our post-modern world with its laser like focus on addressing social injustice, the word ‘privilege’ automatically rings alarm bells, with those groups feeling excluded from ‘privilege’ believing themselves marginalised, powerless and discriminated against. In the areas of gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation this has become increasingly evident over the past 30 plus years, but younger people feeling everyday discrimination or disadvantage from older, more senior and presumably white workers appears a relatively new development.
There is certainly evidence to support the view that the existence of older workers within organisations is negatively perceived by many younger workers. Australian research has revealed that younger people want older workers to cede resources and get out of their way. Older Australian adults have experienced subtle pressure from colleagues and management to stop working to make way for the younger generation. This was regardless of the older adults own working preferences. Overseas research mirrors these local findings. The Forbes Magazine recently reported that 37% of employers say lingering older workers could clog up promotion ladders and hurt younger workers.
Academics (Martin & North) have identified the new phenomenon of ‘succession based’ ageism which advocates that older people step aside to allow younger people and other unrepresented groups better work opportunities. At the forefront of this push as observed by Martin and North are diversity and inclusion professionals. In the USA, these advocates actively push the cause for women and racial minorities but demonstrate significantly less enthusiasm for the older worker who is viewed as an obstruction preventing more deserving groups ‘getting a break’. Such a development opens the possibility that corporate diversity and inclusion initiatives serve an agenda other than driving strategic business change and competitiveness.
The existence of a ‘succession based’ ageism phenomenon does nothing to assist the pursuit of a broader social agenda tackling the existence of ageism. To those younger people who understand older workers as a personal career impediment, older people prosecuting an ageism argument becomes reduced to just another example of ‘old white privilege’. Older people continue to display a selfish and self-interested attitude in promoting an ageism agenda that no-one but them is concerned about. Only the old seem intent on establishing a ‘fair go’ for the older worker. Disappointingly, younger workers perceive older workers as competitors for jobs fuelling an atmosphere of potential resentment towards them. The risk of a social agenda to overcome ageism becoming a potential inter-generational battleground is both a serious threat and a lose- lose proposition for everyone now and in the future.
A generational inequity narrative seems a live issue in our present community, largely abetted by a media keen to promote conflict to sell more newspapers or encourage more social media hits. Much attention is focused on an apparently financially comfortable ‘Baby Boomer’ generation working actively to protect its interests and ‘privileged’ lifestyle. At play seems the creation of an anti- oldies agenda driven by a subtext that one generation benefits at the expense of another. Throwing in the ‘Baby Boomer’s’ contribution to the issue of climate change just adds to the perceived conflict between the young and the old in today’s world.
Core to this seeming conflict between the young and the old is the association of age with a particular generation which is perceived to reflect a common set of experiences and characteristics. ‘Generation’ as a concept is a crude one with no scientific basis when applied to the issue of social change. Often, the variation of members within a given group by class, gender, ethnicity, income, wealth, health status or education as examples, is greater than the variation between generations. Using a generational lens to define issues of ageing and its association with economic advantage or disadvantage represents an action of social provocation, as the accepted wisdom presents the ageing experience as a uniquely individual one with vastly different outcomes for people who might find themselves classified in the same ‘generation’.
Somehow, the seeming conflict between young and old feels like a manipulated, to use the modern vernacular, ‘Squid Game’ scenario. The old are deliberately pitted against the young to distract us all from the widening socio-economic inequalities that have developed in the past 40 years and the politics generating this negative outcome. Disadvantage today is seldom associated with economic opportunity and class (a quaint throwback to the good old days of Marxist lefties dominating unis), rather the extent a person identifies themselves with a marginalised group and the oppression they experience. As the renowned political economist Lester Thurow once remarked ‘in the years ahead, class warfare is apt to be redefined as the young against the old, rather than the poor against the rich’. In our post-modern world, there is the risk that any talk of the ageing issue might become subsumed within the murky world of age-based identity politics, incapacitating a pursuit of a fairer world through acknowledgement that ageing is an issue that affects everyone.
For most of us, whether we are young or old, this is a situation that serves none of our interests. What is needed to remove the taint of age identity politics fuelling ageism perceptions is the building of trust, understanding and respect across generations. Yes, I hear some of you say that this is a remarkably naïve and simple approach to an apparently complex social issue. But sometimes we overcomplicate problems that just require people to more closely interact with each other and begin talking through issues and sharing experiences that build common ground, rather than hurling insults across the social media parapets. The power of people of different ages rubbing shoulders in a show of intergenerational unity represents a far smarter strategy to tackle the questions of ageing and ageism in today’s world than becoming pawns in a falsely manufactured social conflict.
Ageism is a scourge whether you are 21 or 62. Ageism robs people of dignity, hope and opportunity. Recent studies conducted in the United States and the European Union both find that older and younger generations are not in competition with one another for jobs — and that, if anything, the opposite is true. As an older white male, I readily confess to self-interest in tackling the insidious issue of ageism. But, then again, I don’t imagine Emily Pankhurst saw chaining herself to fences all those years ago as an exercise in light Sunday entertainment! Every action we can take today to tackle ageism offers benefit to all those that follow behind us on the ageing journey. Everyone gains from relegating ageism to an historical anachronism and celebrating the power an age neutral and inclusive workforce delivers.
References
Applewhite, A. (2019) This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism; Melville House, UK
Irving, J. (2017) Age discrimination in the workplace happening to people as young as 45: study. The Conversation.
Teresa Ghilarducci, T. (2019) 37% Of Bosses Say Older Workers Clog Promotions for Cheaper Younger Workers. Forbes Magazine (Jan11).
Healy, J. (2018) Men and young people more likely to be ageist: study. The Conversation.
http://theconversation.com/men-and-young-people-more-likely-to-br-ageist-study-93057
Macnicol, J. (2015) Neoliberalising Old Age; Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom
Martin, A.E. & North, M.S. (2021) Equality for (Almost) All: Egalitarian Advocacy Predicts Lower Endorsement of Sexism and Racism, but Not Ageism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes. 1-26
North, M. (2017) Young workers expect their older colleagues to get out of the way. The Conversation.
http://theconversation.com/young-workers-expect-their-older-colleagues-to-get-out-of-the-way-73194
Pluckrose, H. & Lindsay, J. (2020). Cynical Theories: How Universities Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity – and Why This Harms Everybody. Swift Press, Great Britain.
Thurow, L. (1996). The Birth of the Revolutionary Class. New York Times Magazine, (19 May)
Yaylagul, N. K., & Seedsman, T. (2012). Ageing: The common denominator? Population Ageing, 5, 257-279.
