Calling Out Age & Gender Discrimination
In this TEDx Talk, former NY1 anchor/reporter Kristen Shaughnessy discusses age discrimination, including how it intersects with gender discrimination. Her focus is the particular stories of journalists who were forced out of their jobs or struggled to get new jobs because of their age.
While age discrimination is illegal, it is still common in the workplace. We begin to be protected at age forty under the Federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) reports that more than 1/3 of age discrimination cases were from workers between ages forty to fifty-four. An AARP survey found that over half of older workers have seen or experienced age discrimination.
Women are most affected by age discrimination at work. Decision makers are often older white men; they respect other older men as wise, but they prioritize beauty and youth for women workers.
Shaughnessy argues that age discrimination will not end until people speak out about it, even if it costs us our jobs or careers. She also highlights things we can do to address age discrimination in our workplaces, such as noting patterns and documenting discrimination.
We hear throughout our lives, if you work hard, you can be anything you want to be. If you work hard, you can get to the top. And that’s true to a point… but there may be a time in your career that no matter how hard you work, no matter how productive you are or try to be, no matter how much a team player you are, there’s a concerted effort by the bosses to get you out. OR It is not uncommon to see an older man paired with a young female anchor. That man is often old enough to be her father. That man is allowed to go gray. He’s referred to as distinguished. He’s allowed to have wrinkles. It’s considered authoritative and wise. But. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of female journalists, if you can find that, in the United States who have gone gray, not botoxed their wrinkles, and are anchoring a main newscast.
SOURCE: TEDxDeerPark • AUTHOR: Kristen Shaughnessy • LAST UPDATED: April 1, 2021
