If you’re an older woman who’s trying to hold onto a job or looking for a new one, you may face some harsh realities.
Older Women Are Being Forced Out of the Workforce by Lauren Stiller Rikleen in Harvard Business Review:
“For the past five years, I have traveled across the U.S., speaking and conducting research on women’s leadership and advancement and bias in the workplace. Hundreds of women in their 50s and 60s have shared their stories of demotions, job losses, and the inability to find another job—outcomes they attribute primarily to their age and gender. These women often have long histories of career success, but they have seen their responsibilities assigned to younger workers, their compensation lowered for inexplicable reasons, and their career mobility impaired by a workplace that seems to value youth over experience.”
Older Women Are Invisible in the Workplace by Suzanne Moore in The Guardian:
“. . . [W]e are going to have a generation of women retiring into poverty or being made redundant but unable to find more work. Increased life expectancy means increased life expectations – not just a plunge into scraping by. Of course, assertions of the invisibility of older women in positions of power are countered by the exceptions that prove the rule. ‘Look!’ everyone says about Angela Merkel, Hillary Clinton, Christine Lagarde. This is of no help to me whatsoever unless I can retrain as leader of a country I don’t live in. Is there an evening class for that?”
Are you still working, or trying to work? Have you experienced age discrimination? Let us know in the comments!
