Does achieving gender equality only benefit women? Are gender quotas thwarting meritocracy? Are women more risk averse than men? If you think you know the answers to these questions, then think again! Busted is an audio podcast series that busts prominent myths surrounding gender and the economy by teaming up with leading experts in the field. We uncover the origins of each myth and give you the tools to bust each myth yourself!
Busted is a GATE audio series production from the Institute for Gender and the Economy.
There was a kind of issue about you know when they were young they were too young to be taken seriously, now they were old they were too old to be taken seriously. So there was, you know, in some ways, it's like, okay, so is there a sweet spot, you know, of age for a woman that we're actually perceived as competent individuals, professionals working in, you know, in whatever area that we we want?
Dr. Sonia Kang:In the summer of 2022 , CTV National News suddenly terminated their contract with Lisa Laflamme, the 58 year old chief anchor and senior editor who had served in these roles for the past eleven years. The Globe and Mail reported that her termination followed shortly after a meeting in which Laflamme's boss had asked who let Lisa's hair go gray. Unfortunately, this kind of dismissal of older women is all too common not only in media but in many other sectors as well. While anyone can experience ageism, research shows that women tend to have unique and typically more severe experiences. No matter how accomplished they are and no matter how effective they continue to be, older women are perceived to be aging out of relevance.
Dr. Sonia Kang:It's a different story for older men. They're usually perceived as aging into wisdom and given more power and leadership opportunities. In this episode, we'll bust this myth that older women should step aside while older men should step up and explore the gendered nature of ageism. I'm Dr. Sonia Kang, academic director at GATE.
Carmina Ravanera:And I'm Carmina Ravanera, senior research associate at GATE. So there's been quite a bit of research that shows the effects of ageism at work, but also the effects on women specifically. I'll start by pointing out that everyone, no matter their gender, can experience ageism at work. Older workers are often unfairly seen as out of touch, unable to keep up with current trends, and inept at using technology. But women face a specific flavor of ageism based on the intersectional effects of gender and age related bias.
Carmina Ravanera:And, of course, the intersection with other identities like race, motherhood, or disability status can further exacerbate these effects.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Right. So let's talk about how gendered ageism shows up at work. I get the sense that women are never the right age to get ahead. First, they're too green and then they're too gray, Never just right. It's basically a transition from being inexperienced to being outdated.
Carmina Ravanera:Yeah. It's like there are two options for women. You're either not ready or you're past your prime. A recent survey across 46 countries by women of influence plus found that nearly 80% of women report encountering ageism at work, including at a relatively young age. But today we're going to focus on research about older women because it usually doesn't receive much attention.
Carmina Ravanera:And it's becoming especially critical as more and more women 55 remain in or re enter the workforce. So one big way that ageism shows up for older women is that they face pressure to change their appearance as they age. Like if they have gray hair or wrinkles, they have to get rid of them because that can affect whether they get jobs or not or get to keep the jobs that they're in. I talked about this with Dr. Ellie Berger, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Nipissing University, who's done a ton of research on ageism in the Canadian labor market.
Dr. Ellie Berger:So older women experience ageism often at even younger ages than men. So they can often experience ageism even as young as, you know, in their thirties having children, different types of discrimination that could sort of vary by age. But as women get older, they they do experience, ageism more often than men. And they're usually judged more harshly according to their appearance than men are. Some of the things that women felt they needed to do, like dye their hair, you know, get Botox, things like that to prepare for interviews even. Whereas men might sometimes talk about they wanted to shave their beards, but they didn't always feel it was necessary. So women feel a lot more of the internalized pressure related to ageism as well. There's so much pressure on women as they age, you know, especially with respect to appearance. And you think even magazines that, you know, or online design, you know, advertisements that are designed for teenagers even.
Dr. Ellie Berger:Advertisements that are designed for teenagers even or people in their twenties. And it's always the antiaging cream and makeup and how to hide your fine lines, and it starts so young. So, of course, we're gonna take it with us as we get older and internalize it, but then also reflect it to other people if we happen to be the ones responsible for doing the hiring or promotion or training as well.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Right. These perceptions of aging and gender are super widespread across society. So it's no wonder that they filter into the workplace, shaping decisions about hiring, promotions, and career longevity.
Carmina Ravanera:I also spoke with doctor Karen Ross, professor emerita of gender and media at Newcastle University. She's examined gendered ageism by interviewing older women in the media industry. And Karen explained how women in the public eye, like news anchors, are especially vulnerable to scrutiny over their appearance.
Dr. Karen Ross:Male managers and female managers, actually. It wasn't simply male managers, you know, women, older women. There was this view that somehow the viewers, the audience, they didn't want to look at you know some wrinkled old crone. That that was just so and that that view was never backed up with any kind of research with audiences which said yeah they don't want to look at some wrinkled old woman and they're obviously perfectly happy looking at a wrinkled old man because you know I think in The UK and I'm sure in Canada and everywhere else we have presenters male presenters of TV shows. I mean David Attenborough is bloody 98 or something, like he's nearly a hundred.
Dr. Karen Ross:He's still going. No one would dream of kind of booting him off because he hasn't had Botox. And a number of women would say did say that they had been told that they if they if they wanted to extend their life on screen, they needed to just have fillers, Botox, go on a diet, dye their hair, all these things. So accepting that they were aging, they just didn't need to look like they were aging.
Carmina Ravanera:Karen also pointed out that as women reach a certain age, the men that they work with no longer see them as, quote, unquote, malleable enough. They're less willing to conform to expectations or are not as easily controlled, which makes it more likely that they'll be pushed out.
Dr. Karen Ross:If a woman an older woman was working for a male manager, what they what they would say in terms of how they experience gendered ageism, they would say things like, well, I'm much less malleable than my than younger women. Yeah. There's no way so I'm the same age as my male manager. There's no way in which they're not interested in me, you know, sexually or in any other way, you you know so I don't rely on them, I don't need their their patronage, I don't need their say so. So so for a number of women who've been working in the industry for you know twenty or thirty years often there's nothing that I mean, not that they didn't knew that they knew everything, but they couldn't be controlled, and they couldn't be, you know, they they their mail manager couldn't threaten them with with anything that well, you know, you're never gonna make it as as a, you know, as an actor, as a journalist, as a presenter, unless you're unless you're nice to me.
Dr. Karen Ross:So I think that so there are issues around the fact that their male manager doesn't, you know, doesn't it can't actually control them in any way. It can't threaten them with anything. The if they happen to have a kind of male manager who is more or less their age, then, yeah, they they believe that they then remind them of their wives. They don't wanna be working with their wives. If it's a younger male manager, they remind them of their mothers.
Dr. Karen Ross:They don't want to be you know? So there's always this idea that they can't be they're never seen just in their own terms they're never seen as simply a really experienced competent journalist slash anchor slash you know, actor slash producer, they're always not just in the media industry, but generally, I would argue, they're always women.
Carmina Ravanera:And then there's the relentless stream of microaggressions, subtle but persistent messages that women have overstayed their welcome.
Dr. Karen Ross:The other thing, particularly for women in their kind of fifties who who who experienced that, is that also can coincide with being menopausal. So you've got this situation. They're at their height in some ways of their professional power because they've had experience. You know, they've just you know, the the kids are older. They've got more more time to dedicate to their kind of profession, and that they then get, you know, knocked around the head with the menopause.
Dr. Karen Ross:And again, that is something that's also, I would argue, is part of gendered ageism. All the the, you know, the snide remarks of, oh my god. She's having a hot flush and, you know, oh my god. What's she all the all that sweat everywhere. So so that menopause is, again, a kind of issue as part of gendered ageism in the same way as, you know, accusations of PMT ing of the younger women.
Dr. Sonia Kang:It's so frustrating to hear how women who've already proven themselves in their careers still face these barriers and pressures. What does the research say about how women cope with this age related bias?
Carmina Ravanera:Well, Ellie's research found that older women and older workers in general use different strategies to manage these biases, but that the focus is on hiding their age as best as they can.
Dr. Ellie Berger:So I sort of grouped these, I called them age related management techniques, and I grouped them into, counteractions and concealments. So what I found was that women in particular felt a greater need to use these counteractions and concealments. So counteractions would be things like, you know, ways that they could offset employers' negative views. So maybe staying up to date with their training so that, you know, next time they went on a job interview, they could say, yes. I do have all of those qualifications.
Dr. Ellie Berger:And, so simple things like that, but they did women did feel a greater need to to, mention some of these things in interviews, for example. And then the concealments are when older workers wanted to hide specific information related to age. So one of the things was resumes, for example. And a lot of times, employment counselors would tell them, you know, you should take off some of the years of experience or maybe switch to a more, functional kind of resume where it lists your your, skills but not your jobs. And so that was something that, some of the older workers felt was necessary.
Dr. Ellie Berger:But, again, with some of the older women, they were sort of seeing it in a different way because they often would have gaps in their work history that men didn't have. Or maybe some of them went back to school later in life, which is more common for women. So, they talked more about the need to alter their resumes. And then especially, women talked about more of a need to conceal some aspect of their appearance, whether it was, you know, gray hair, and feeling the need to dye their hair. And a couple women talked about how they didn't dye their hair out of principle, but they still did feel like it was harming their job search.
Dr. Ellie Berger:Whereas men would talk about, you know, I sort of touched on that before, but, you know, they may talk about, well, I might shave my beard or maybe I'll go get a toupee, and they sort of would joke about it, but they wouldn't actually do any of these behaviors. It was just something that maybe they were contemplating at that point.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Interesting. So these strategies definitely echo what members of other stigmatized groups do to try and get jobs and advance in their careers. For example, racial minorities are more likely to get callbacks when they whiten their resumes by changing their names or removing any experiences or accomplishments that could reveal their racial identities. Similarly, racial minority workers engage in identity shifting or code switching, where they'll change their appearance, hairstyles, speaking style, or attire to fit in and be taken seriously at work.
Carmina Ravanera:Yeah. Exactly. And looking at this from an intersectional perspective, this means that racialized older women are forced to fight multiple biases at the same time. Ellie also mentioned that a lot of ageism is ableist with employers saying things like they don't want to hire someone who's quote unquote creaky and shaky. Race, disability, age, and gender can all overlap to affect people's experiences at work.
Dr. Sonia Kang:That's awful.
Carmina Ravanera:I know. And going back to ageism in the media sector, Karen pointed out that women in her study responded to ageism in different ways, including leaving the industry or even bringing their workplace to a tribunal.
Dr. Karen Ross:A number of women who I interviewed had actually taken their employer to an industrial tribunal. Most women who did that settled out of court, because actually, it's it's a really expensive process to go all the way to court for a start. There's no guarantee of, you know, that they're going to be successful. So most women will settle out of court, but then the the trade off is that they then have to sign an NDA a non disclosure agreement so they can never talk about the detail of their case, they can never talk about how much they were awarded. So a number of women did do that but far more women didn't do that because the stress of taking a court case.
Dr. Karen Ross:Some women actually I mean, certainly in the in The UK, a number of the women who were successful even though they settled out of court were supported by their union. Of course that does actually require that there is that they can gather evidence and often the evidence is well I'm I'm in a presenting team of three, I'm the only woman there are two men, their contracts got renewed mine didn't. That there is we are doing exactly the same job. There is no reason why my contract hasn't been renewed. So often, they they're successful when they can actually point and say, you know what?
Dr. Karen Ross:This this is I have been let go or my contract hasn't been renewed because I'm a a woman and I'm an older woman. So so some women do do that. Most women don't do that. Most women just leave very quietly because they cannot cope with the drip drip drip of gendered ageism. So some women just think you know what I'm just going to do something for myself and a number of them actually just go they just go in they just go freelance or and or a number I think out of the the 24 women who I interviewed I think at least six had actually become tutor, university teachers.
Dr. Karen Ross:They have just you know pivoted from being from being a journalist to teaching journalism. So but none of the the point is that none of them went voluntarily you know none of none of them wanted to leave the industry which they loved and have been working in, you know, as, you know, as actors, producers, directors, you know, reporters, whatever whatever they were doing.
Dr. Sonia Kang:So women navigate ageism as best as they can from changing their appearances to leaving their jobs altogether. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to have to decide whether to fight for their place or be pushed out of a career they've built over decades of hard work.
Carmina Ravanera:Exactly. This has a massive impact on how people see themselves, their mental and physical health, and their economic situations.
Dr. Ellie Berger:Once people would go, say, for a job interview and or to an employment counsellor and they were now considered older, they would start to internalize it and a lot of it became like a self fulfilling prophecy. So, once you start to believe you're old and disqualified or not as capable as a younger worker, for example, then some of that was reflected, you know, in a job search, for example. So it also affected not only their identity, but then also their financial stability because now all of a sudden they need a job and they're, you know, they're on the outside trying to get back in, and they they can't actually find a job because of ageism. So it affected their income, but then also their ability to save for retirement, for example. So ageism has a lot of, negative impacts, on the individual.
Dr. Ellie Berger:I'd say also health for sure, both physical and mental health. People felt like they were, you know, having different health issues they'd never had before, high blood pressure, things like that, effects of stress and, discrimination, affecting that. And then mental health and depression and things like that that also came out of experiencing discrimination in the workplace. There's more and more research that shows that internalized ageism is actually harming our own health. So not only are we experiencing ageism from other people, but we're also having these negative views about ourselves.
Dr. Ellie Berger:And there's more and more work that shows it's it's just unhealthy. And, you know, so we need to challenge our own negative perceptions, but then also challenge them in in day to day conversations in the workplace, I think in society in general.
Dr. Sonia Kang:So how can we mitigate gendered ageism at work? What can organizations do?
Carmina Ravanera:There are lots of different policies and practices that can be put into place. Ellie suggested some promising solutions from her research, including fostering intergenerational relationships.
Dr. Ellie Berger:So I think definitely education is a big thing that needs to be happening in society in general, but especially in the workplace in terms of, you know, diversity, equity, inclusion strategies. They need to start including ageism if they're not already. I've seen more examples of that recently, but it's still, pretty rare it seems to be included in, an actual strategy in the workplace. So I think that is sort of a a good first step so that, a lot of times we need to dispel some of the myths and stereotypes about older workers or older women in particular. And I think by educating, you know, workers of all ages, you know, so that younger and older workers can learn together, but also have intergenerational relationships.
Dr. Ellie Berger:So that's another, recent finding that intergenerational relationships sort of fostering those relationships can help reduce ageism. So that can be in society in general, but also in the workplace. So I think strategies that employers could use like reciprocal mentoring, for example, where you would pair a younger and older worker together and then, you know, the younger worker maybe can, help the older one with technology, learning new technology. But the older one could help the younger one in terms of, you know, the institutional memory and institutional knowledge that they could impart sort of for the next generation. Definitely trying to create and foster, an age friendly workplace, I think, is really important.
Dr. Ellie Berger:And, again, I think that benefits people of all ages. So, you know, having the ability to work from home or more flexible hours, taking leaves for, you know, whether it's a sick leave or a leave to take care of, children or parents, which often is, put on women still these days.
Dr. Sonia Kang:These are some great ideas. Intergenerational relationships, especially, can help create allyship between younger and older people. And that could be such a great opportunity to help women stay in the workforce.
Carmina Ravanera:And Karen pointed out that even with policies in place, it's up to people to make sure they're being implemented.
Dr. Karen Ross:The issue I think for, you know, for so many people is it's not about legislation. You know, in The UK, we've had equality legislation for more than fifty years, and I'm sure it'll be the same in Canada. It's it's the same in The US. So it's not about more legislation. What's what's required is the is if for it to be implemented.
Dr. Karen Ross:And most major organizations, particularly, I mean, for public service brokers like like the BBC or NBC or or any of the others, they will have gender equality policies or equality policies. But unless these policies are implemented and monitored, nothing's gonna change. All these organizations will have equality policies, but that's that's just that's just paper. That's just paper. If there is no equality committee that every, you know, every month, every three months, every six months, reviews hires, reviews promotions, you know, is actually looking to see are we actually implementing our own equality policies?
Dr. Karen Ross:And if we are, how do we see change? Do we now see more women in senior positions or more older women in senior positions? Do we see more diverse hires? Do we see more, you know, black and brown kind of people who are actually working other than cleaners. You know?
Dr. Karen Ross:So unless unless that's you know, unless unless an organization is committed to actually monitoring their own practice with their own policies, which they have spent god knows how many, you know, personas developing, I I can't see how things are going to change. If you are genuinely interested in the best person for your job for for the job, whatever that job is, that's that that's the kind of mindset that we need for women and men.
Dr. Sonia Kang:So we need policy that supports senior workers, especially women, to make sure they're in a work environment where they can thrive. But policy alone isn't enough. People, including older men, must also recognize, understand, and actively challenge gendered ageism to create real change.
Carmina Ravanera:Right. And one of the ways to do that is through education. Ellie told me that ageism is one of the few biases that still goes widely unaddressed in our society. All of us should be thinking about it and how it appears in our daily lives.
Dr. Ellie Berger:Ageism is still one of the last sort of accepted isms in our society and it seems to be okay for us to make a joke about ourselves getting older. But, you know, it it sort of self perpetuates the ageism. Even something as simple as, you know, buying an ageist birthday card. There's, you know, so many of them out there. Or you go into, you know, party stores and all of these decorations are over the hill and, you know, it's so ingrained in everyone.
Dr. Ellie Berger:So then, of course, it's gonna be reflected in the workplace. So So I think if we can make little changes in our daily lives, then, you know, it it definitely will be less obvious in the workplace and hopefully will eventually, change attitudes. And I think something that I found interesting that even when I was interviewing employers who were older themselves, they were still making negative comments about older workers. So, you know, we do it it we do need to challenge our own negative views and and perceptions, and often it's related to our own fear of aging also.
Dr. Sonia Kang:So to sum things up, if someone was to say to me or imply that older women should step aside because they age out of relevance at work, what's something I could say to bust this myth?
Carmina Ravanera:Well, you could point out that this is a clear example of gendered ageism. It's a perception that society has so it's only as true as society makes it. Research clearly shows that older women are treated more harshly and seen as less relevant than older men even if they're highly experienced, competent, and productive. Society gives older men power and authority and access to leadership, but shuts down access to those things for older women. Educating ourselves about how ageism shows up is how we can start to identify and mitigate it.
Carmina Ravanera:And another point that Karen made is that there are so many examples of older women leaders and trailblazers across all fields that bust this myth head on.
Dr. Karen Ross:That's a really interesting report, in the Forbes top hundred most, influential women. Out of those top hundred women, 80% are over 50. 50% are over 60. Yeah. There are plenty of examples, you know, of of older women in positions of authority. We just because the media is just so fixated with youth and doesn't really like older women, we don't hear about them.
Dr. Karen Ross:So so I think the myth is that they don't exist. That's that's the myth to bust. They they certainly do exist.
Carmina Ravanera:So the idea that women become irrelevant as they age is truly a sexist myth. From the media to politics to Hollywood, there are plenty of older women who are successful leaders in their fields that we can look to for inspiration.
Dr. Sonia Kang:And with that, this myth is busted. Make sure you subscribe. We'll be back with a new episode soon.
Carmina Ravanera:In the meantime, happy myth busting. GATE's Busted podcast is made possible by generous support from BMO. If you liked this episode, please rate and subscribe to Busted. You can also find more interesting podcast series from the Institute for Gender and the Economy by searching GATE Audio wherever you find your podcasts. Thanks for tuning in.