Ageism, the prejudice that just won’t go away in this ultra-PC world
In recent years, we’ve been energetic at identifying and calling out “isms”, but the one exception seems to be ageism. It’s still perfectly acceptable to treat those over a certain age as if they’re “past it” and useless – in Thursday’s US presidential debate, cries that Democratic contenders Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders were “too old to run the country” were belted out without any worry about seeming patronising. As Carol Vorderman, 58, passionately insisted in August while fronting a campaign for insurers SunLife, ageism is the “last taboo”.
Nowhere is this clearer than in employment practices, where people nearing 70 can be forced out on their ear to make way for younger people – no matter how well they’re doing, or how capable they still are. So one can’t help but cheer Paul Ewart, a professor of physics at Oxford and former head of atomic and laser physics at the
Clarendon Laboratory, who is fighting his forced retirement at 69. Prof Ewart’s research, which helps to combat climate change, was only just “blossoming” when he fell afoul of the university’s Employer Justified Retirement Age (EJRA) scheme. In the two years before he was made to bow out, he published 15 papers and was involved in major projects to create ultra-efficient engines.
He is claiming unfair dismissal – and rightly so. The
young need a chance, sure, but breakthroughs can come at any age, experience is golden, and cutting someone dead just because they’re over a certain age is counterproductive.
Cervantes only wrote Don Quixote in his 50s, Cezanne had his first exhibition at 56, Verdi’s Falstaff premiered when he was 79. And a 2016 study found that scientists are especially prone to breakthroughs at any time: “We find that the highestimpact work in a scientist’s career is randomly distributed within her body of work,” the authors concluded, stressing the importance of experience, dedication and luck over youth.
The tardiness of the recognition that those over 60 deserve to be treated with the same open mind as everyone else is all the stranger given how quickly age is changing meaning. Take the increasing number of people in their 50s who look like thirtysomethings – see Jennifers Lopez and Aniston, both 50, for details. Among singletons, younger men are flocking to date women twice their age, and women in their 50s are carrying babies to term – rarely, but it happens, as in the case of Brigitte Nielsen, who gave birth at 54.
Workplaces are constantly being told to be “inclusive”. Now they need to practice what they preach in relation to those with a grey hair or two.