Ageism in Work and Employment

Citation

Oswick, C. (2002), "Ageism in Work and Employment", Employee Relations, Vol. 24 No. 4, pp. 463-465. https://doi.org/10.1108/er.2002.24.4.463.2

By comparison with other areas of discrimination in the workplace (such as sexism and racism), ageism has received a relatively limited amount of academic attention. There are clearly some very important and influential contributions to our understanding of age bias and its enactment (see, for example, Branine and Glover, 1997; Bytheway, 1995; Lyon et al., 1998). However, at a broader level much of the work that highlights the nature, prevalence and impact of age discrimination has tended to be more journalistic than academic; insofar as it can often be characterised as having a heavy reliance on job advertisement sampling, isolated first‐hand accounts or selective anecdotal evidence. In this regard the edited volume by Glover and Branine is a timely contribution that offers a much needed rigorous treatment of the phenomena.

The collection contains 19 chapters and has three main parts. Each of these parts addresses what the editors identify as the three main aims of the book. The aims can be summarised as:

1. 1.

   (1) to identify and discuss the nature and main causes of ageism in work and employment in the UK;

2. 2.

   (2) to describe and explore the experience and practice of age discrimination in work and employment;

3. 3.

   (3) to present, compare and contrast – within the context of relevant economic, political and social trends – some of the main remedies which have been proposed as measures for tackling ageism.

Despite a recent practice‐driven upsurge of interest in ageism, it remains under‐researched and under‐theorised. It is both a formative and a dynamic area of inquiry. Against this backdrop the volume makes a highly commendable attempt to meet its rather ambitious stated aims.

On the face of it the separation of the chapters into the three main parts (i.e. “problems and causes”, “experience and practice” and “remedies and prospects”) appears to make sense and provide overarching thematic coherence. However, on closer inspection this delineation is difficult to sustain – not least because many of the chapters simultaneously deal with problems and remedies through the analysis of experience. One is left feeling that a number of the chapters could have been located in any of the main parts and as a consequence the book tends to jump around between the core topics. The opening chapter in the “problems and causes” phase of the book, by Colin Duncan, is a perfect illustration of this problem. In addition to a well constructed and informative review of the concept of ageism, Duncan looks at the problems arising from the early exit of older workers from the labour market. He then goes on to concentrate on “drawing some conclusions concerning the efficacy of current and proposed policy responses” (p. 25).

Irrespective of the problems arising from the interwoven nature of the discussion of problems, practice and remedies within specific chapters, this edited collection contains some high quality contributions. In particular, the paper by Christine Tillsley and Philip Taylor (chapter 18) draws upon the experiences of other countries in managing a third‐age workforce to persuasively argue for a new research agenda. Although taking a far more micro‐oriented line of inquiry, Peter Herriot’s treatment of the notion of the “plateaued manager” (chapter 4) provides some equally thought‐provoking insights, but in this case into the issue of age stereotyping.

Some of the other chapters are perhaps a little more modest in terms of their ambition and content. The purpose of chapter 10, which involves an interview between one of the editors (Ian Glover) and a “chronologically challenged” management consultant (David Jenkins), was unclear to me. The conversation seemed somewhat meandering and would have greatly benefited from either an accompanying narrative or pockets of analysis rather than simply the verbatim exchanges. The relevance of the paper by Jenny Hamilton (chapter 11) was also highly questionable. Although this chapter was generally well written, it focused upon anti‐ageist legislation in Australia without ever really exploring it in terms of the implications for the UK. By contrast, the subsequent contribution by Darren Smith (i.e. chapter 12) meaningfully paralleled the nature of age stereotyping in New Zealand with the UK experience by using an adapted version of a questionnaire developed by Peter Warr (1992).

One overriding concern with this book as a whole relates to the contemporary nature of the insights offered. Two thirds of the papers which form the edited volume (n=12) were presented at a conference hosted by the editors in 1996. Although the authors would have revised and updated their papers since then, much of the empirical work from which conclusions about ageism are derived is now more than six years old. This is particularly problematic in a field in which attitudes, behaviour, policies and practice have markedly shifted in recent times. For example, major recent developments, such as an EC directive which will force the UK to introduce anti‐ageist legislation within the next five years, are not considered within the text. That said, it is important not to overstate the “datedness” of the edited collection for two reasons. First, there is always an avoidable lag between published work and what is happening in real time. Second, the elapsed time does not detract from the quality of many of the contributions, if readers bear in mind the temporal context of the research undertaken.

Overall this book is a very worthwhile endeavour and makes a valuable contribution to the limited extant literature. It is ambitious, informative and the breadth of coverage is extensive. In my view it is a must for academics and postgraduate researchers/students who are interested in age discrimination and related areas such as workforce diversity, discrimination theory and practice, and social gerontology.