{"id":7527,"date":"2024-01-16T11:58:11","date_gmt":"2024-01-16T16:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/?p=7527"},"modified":"2024-01-16T11:58:11","modified_gmt":"2024-01-16T16:58:11","slug":"women-in-the-workforce-are-never-the-right-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2024\/01\/women-in-the-workforce-are-never-the-right-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Women in the Workforce Are Never the Right Age"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why are women&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">still<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;so underrepresented in positions of power?&nbsp;In the United States, for example, why do women still make up only a meager 10 percent of people running Fortune 500 companies? Take heart, there\u2019s always a reason.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Content warning: this article, just out in the&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Harvard Business Review<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, may raise your blood pressure.) The authors of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2023\/06\/women-in-leadership-face-ageism-at-every-age\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWomen in Leadership Face Ageism at Every Age\u201d<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> surveyed 913 US women leaders across four industries (higher ed, faith-based nonprofits, law and health care). Their conclusion? \u201cThere was always an age-based excuse to not take women seriously, to discount their opinions or to not hire or promote them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Women under age 40 are patronized or face a \u201ccredibility deficit.\u201d That\u2019s what\u2019s happening \u201cif ever you\u2019ve been asked, \u2018Are you sure that\u2019s right?\u2019 or been disbelieved after making a statement,\u201d <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">explains researcher Amy Diehl, PhD,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;who coined the term with Leanne M. Dzubinsk, PhD, for their book <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Glass Walls: Shattering the Six Gender Bias Barriers Still Holding Women Back at Work (2023)<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The two coauthored this study with Amber L. Stephenson, PhD.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hoping for a sweet mid-career spot? For women, there\u2019s no such thing. \u201cWomen between ages 40 and 60 in our study fared no better than their younger or older counterparts,\u201d the authors found. Fertility\u2019s a problem (\u201ctoo much family responsibility\u201d), as is its demise (\u201cmenopause-related issues\u201d could be \u201cchallenging to manage\u201d).<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over 60? Expect to be passed over. Because you\u2019re unworthy, unattractive, \u201cnot vital,\u201d outdated \u2026 &nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In other words, \u201cNo age was the right age to be a woman leader.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One clarifier: the authors describe this discrimination as \u201cyoungism,\u201d \u201cmiddle-ageism,\u201d and \u201coldism.\u201d Those categories distract and divide. It\u2019s&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">all<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;ageism\u2014which is&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">any<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;judgement on the basis of age\u2014and as this study&nbsp;documents so well,&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">all<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;women are up against it,&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">all<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;the damn time. Unlike our male counterparts, who spend decades \u201cin their prime,\u201d women get no prime time. First we\u2019re too cute; then we\u2019re too fertile; then we\u2019re not cute or fertile and that\u2019s all he wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But wait! It\u2019s not just age. Women are often perceived as \u201cnever quite right\u201d across a range of other traits as well. As the researchers wrote in a separate article for&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fast Company<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201c30 critiques holding women back from leadership that most men will never hear,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d just about any characteristic was used to question a woman\u2019s competence and leadership potential. They were \u201ctoo short or too tall, too pretty or too unattractive or too heavy. They had too much education or not enough.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;Women lost out because they were single. Or married. Or divorced. Introverts didn\u2019t have what it takes to run an organization, and extroverts were \u201caggressive.\u201d Racial bias made barriers to promotion even higher for women of color. Ableism was yet another hurdle.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The authors of the study urge individual women not to take this personally. To resist our conditioning to internalize criticism as something to \u201cfix\u201d about ourselves. To contextualize the comment by \u201cflipping\u201d it: yes, men face workplace bias too, but when\u2019s the last time one was asked to smile more? Or denied a promotion for becoming a father?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, organizations can do better. They can recognize gendered ageism, which is still largely absent from DEI agendas. They can focus on actual skills (imagine that!) when hiring or promoting. They can foster age-diverse teams.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the workplace won\u2019t change without culture change. If men were gonna change things, they woulda. \u201cThe personal is political\u201d was a feminist rallying cry in the 1970s. In other words, don\u2019t take it personally, take it politically. It\u2019s&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">so<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;not about you. It\u2019s about the double whammy of gendered ageism, which disempowers all women. It\u2019s about patriarchy: a system in which men have more power and use it to hold onto it. And it\u2019s about prejudice, which pits us against each other and distracts us from the fact that&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">all<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;women face the same barriers&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">all<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;our lives\u2014ageism, sexism and patriarchy.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s what\u2019s going on when women vie for the few \u201cseats for women,\u201d instead of going after all the damn seats. Or when older and younger colleagues treat each other badly because they resent how unfairly social and professional capital are allocated. Being young is hard! So is aging while female! What makes both so much harder than they ought to be? Overarching systems: ageism, sexism and patriarchy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Solidarity is a pact, a commitment to taking responsibility for each other and joining forces across difference. The sisters of this sisterhood must represent all ages. All races too, I hope.&nbsp;The women\u2019s movement has long <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thischairrocks.com\/2021\/05\/05\/learning-from-the-womens-movements-mistakes-and-doing-better\/\">focused on issues that predominantly affect white women<\/a>.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> We white women need to change that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">White women need to relinquish our white privilege; keep in mind that problems play out differently for different people; learn how to be allies; accept that outcomes will differ from what we might have chosen; and act in ways that that don\u2019t come at the expense of other women.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recent US history offers harsh lessons. Middle-class white women were instrumental in electing, and attempting to re-elect, an overtly racist president who bragged about degrading and sexually assaulting women. The &nbsp;people who\u2019ve benefited most from the affirmative action policies struck down in June by the Supreme Court are white women, yet most white women oppose it. They see race before gender. They choose the shelter of whiteness over liberation for their sisters\u2014and true liberation for themselves.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.nytimes.com\/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com\/2015\/10\/15\/a-feminism-where-leaning-in-means-leaning-on-others\/\">Leaning in<\/a>\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to crack the glass ceiling perpetuates patriarchy; it will never set us free. The gender wage gap, for example, has barely budged in decades. Shocker: it widens as women age. &nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Those of us who want equal rights for all women need to come together in outrage, resistance and ongoing collective action. A workforce\u2014and a world\u2014 that advance women of color are better for everyone.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why are women&nbsp;still&nbsp;so underrepresented in positions of power?&nbsp;In the United States, for example, why do women still make up only a meager 10 percent of people running Fortune 500 companies? Take heart, there\u2019s always a reason.&nbsp; (Content warning: this article,<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2024\/01\/women-in-the-workforce-are-never-the-right-age\/\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Women in the Workforce Are Never the Right Age<\/span><span class=\"meta-nav\"> &#8250;<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7528,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[79,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-voices-views"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":"","source_text":"","source_url":""},"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7529,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7527\/revisions\/7529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}