We often think of stereotypes as being centered around controversial issues such as race, gender and religion. However, one very harmful class of stereotype that affects more than one subset of society is ageism. The manifestation of stereotypes against both old and young determine who gets opportunities in the workforce and who is deemed more or less competent. Ageism is just as demeaning as attacks against someone’s race or sex because their effects are just as debilitating and hurtful.
The connotations of the words “old” and “young” are pretty clear in our society, especially in the sphere of professionalism. The elderly are deemed forgetful, inefficient, rigid and adverse to change, while youth are thought to be inexperienced and distracted. Both stereotypes are invalid, and both are economically and socially damaging to two crucial components of our world. We usually see ageism affecting the elderly more than young people, but society as a whole needs to acknowledge that it targets both groups before we can work towards removing it from our professional and personal lives.
The competition between old and young in the workplace is no stranger to the media and looms over many of our heads as we graduate from college in hopes of landing a job. With the 2007 economic collapse, thousands of people lost their jobs and struggled for months or even years to gain back their livelihood. As more and more students graduated and started to look for employment, older and more experienced workers were seeking the same opportunities. As expected, the older worker was seen as more competent, and the younger one was pushed aside, given no opportunity to gain the experience needed to survive in a corporate world.
In addition, due to the unpromising and inconsistent factors of retirement funds and stability, many older people have been retiring much later than their predecessors. The proportion of men aged 20-24 working fell from 70.4 percent in 2007 to only 58 percent in 2010 and is only recently making a slow climb. Youth unemployment is still at a shocking 17.1 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Young people leaving school with no stability should receive as much credit as older people holding onto jobs because of the same lack of stability.
The youth have as much potential as the elderly, and delaying their opportunities to grow in the workforce will only hurt our economy in the future when there is a whole generation of people with little to no work experience. We need to work with retirees in order to make sure they are well taken care of, if they feel they are ready to retire, and also start to balance the age groups represented in major companies and firms.
However, it is not fair to say that the elderly should be crowded out of the workforce to make room for the young. Growing older in a world obsessed with technology is undoubtedly difficult, but it is not impossible to adapt and learn. It must be remembered that the older generation was trained for a world which no longer exists, but their age doesn’t signify an immutable decline. Rather, each individual has the potential to become comfortable with how our world is today.
Take, for example, Barbara Beskind, a 91-year-old woman who has dreamed of being an inventor since the age of 10. Beskind recently got a job at a Silicon Valley top designing firm, IDEO, famous for designing the Apple mouse and other devices. She focuses on the advent of products related to aging and believes that age brings a certain experience you simply cannot teach. Beskind regards her coworkers, many of them young and fresh out of college, as family. They learn from one another, bounce ideas off of each other and use their respective strengths to make up for one another’s weaknesses. That is precisely how every company and aspect of the workforce should be. Ageism currently affects both the young and the old in negative ways, but if we used differences in age to bridge gaps instead of widen them — while ensuring that there is balanced and fair representation of both groups in the workforce — the stereotype would slowly but surely be eliminated.