Aging in the office
Forty-six-year-old Sheryl Campbell was talking with a colleague in his twenties one sunny afternoon when it hit her with the force of a late labour contraction: I could be his mother!
The Edmonton communications consultant just smiled to herself and kept chatting about the project at hand. “It doesn’t do any good to think that way,” she explains. “That’s feeling uncomfortable about your age and I feel pretty comfortable about mine.”
Campbell’s age did become an issue on another occasion, and it wasn’t nearly as amusing. She was passed over for a job in favour of someone 15 years younger — and $20,000 cheaper. “The ageism thing in my own experience translates into an economic thing,” says Campbell. “They can get somebody younger for cheaper because they don’t have the experience and they don’t have the skill set.”
But despite that one episode, she thinks the wealth of experience that comes with age has helped her win jobs. “My colleagues recognize that I have really strong and valuable insights, so I am actually treated with more respect.”
Pat Schneider also gets her fair share of respect. The 56-year-old partner in a thriving management consulting and e-learning firm in Calgary has spent 25 years helping companies get the best from their employees. In the past couple of years, however, she’s been startled to bump into the occasional bout of age discrimination.
Age discrimination against women
“I am a person with enormous confidence and experience, and I have never felt I was hitting a glass ceiling or any of those clichés that women sometimes rely on to mask their disappointments,” Schneider says. “But recently I have really noticed, particularly in men, ageism against middle-aged women.”
She recalls a meeting with the CEO of a major Canadian organization where they were discussing whether a vibrant 52-year-old woman they both knew would be suitable for a senior VP position. “He said, ‘She looks so tired these days and she’s let herself go; I think she’s ready to retire, not to take on the next big opportunity.’ I just sort of looked at him. I was gobsmacked that this enlightened guy, not yet 50, the head of a major company, would say something like that.”
“There’s always been ageism and sexism and any number of other ‘isms,’” says executive search consultant Anne Fawcett. “There are individuals who still exercise these attitudes and have authority for hiring people and making career decisions. We’ll never be rid of it entirely because we’ll never be rid of people.”
