Senior Women Should Seize Power Later In Careers, AARP Head Says At Forbes' 30/50 Summit

The number of women over the age of 50 will double by the year 2050, according to Jo Ann Jenkins, CEO of AARP. “And that's an enormous power and an opportunity for us to address the things that are so important to women around the world,” she added during the Forbes 30/50 Summit in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.

The conference, a celebration of International Women’s Day, includes many on the Forbes 50 over 50 list, making age a topic of interest. Despite the successes of the women on the list, age discrimination remains a serious problem. One AARP study found age discrimination against Americans over 50 cost the U.S. economy $850 billion in 2018. That leaves substantial untapped potential. The report estimates “the potential economic contribution of the 50-plus age cohort could increase by $3.9 trillion in a no-age bias economy.”

Although both women and men face ageism, research indicates women are impacted more by this bias. In one study, researchers sent out 40,000 fictional resumes where they varied only the gender and age of the applicant. Otherwise, the resumes were identical. Resumes from younger women had a callback rate of almost double the rate for older women. Although older men were also called back less frequently than more youthful men, the results indicated that women faced a steeper drop-off in callback rates as they aged.

The additional age bias against middle-aged and older women stems from several factors, including a warmth bias, lookism and lagging effects from greater responsibility for childcare.

Warmth Bias

According to a recent set of studies published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, a warmth bias exists against middle-aged professional women, which can impact their workplace evaluations. Women are generally expected to be warm and friendly, and they can experience backlash if they’re perceived as too power-hungry or not friendly enough. But researchers recently found that the perception of working women's warmth diminishes with age, and this can lead to adverse career outcomes.

In one of the studies, researchers examined university professors’ teaching evaluations at different stages of their careers. They tried to account for extraneous factors that might impact the evaluations, such as parenting responsibilities and additional workload.

The study found that male professors maintained consistent evaluations, regardless of age, throughout their careers. However, the same was not true for their female counterparts. Evaluations for female professors peaked during their younger years, only to experience a sharp decline as they progressed to middle age. “For women, evaluation scores of their teaching—the same activity that they engaged in and were evaluated similarly to men earlier in their careers—declined from young adulthood to middle age,” the researchers write. “Contrary to the idea that teaching ability is a skill that is likely to improve with experience, women were uniquely evaluated as significantly worse teachers even after they had gained additional experience,” they add.

Interestingly, it wasn't the women’s competence that was questioned, but rather their warmth. The researchers do not believe that these women actually became less warm as they aged. Instead, as these women gained more expertise in their fields, they were penalized for not adhering to feminine stereotypes.

Lookism

Older women also face a greater bias due to lookism, which refers to the youthful beauty standards women face at work. Those considered more attractive generally earn higher incomes and receive better evaluations at work.

As women age, they’re perceived as less attractive. Although the same happens to men as they age, the effect is more pronounced for women. As a result, women report more pressure to maintain a youthful look and are almost twice as likely as men to feel the need to take action, such as dying their hair to adhere to beauty standards. On television, it’s easy to see how the effects of lookism impact women in the entertainment industry. An analysis of broadcast and streaming programs revealed there are twice as many roles for male characters over 60 compared to women in this age bracket.

Childcare

Finally, women are more likely to work part-time or take breaks during their careers due to their greater family responsibilities. Unfortunately, these career blips can affect women as they try to catch up and advance. Middle-aged women, in particular, may be disadvantaged when competing with men with uninterrupted career paths.

Nonetheless, the message from several speakers at the Forbes 30/50 Summit is that women can break through these barriers to achieve their goals at any age. When 66-year-old Tik Tok cooking sensation Lynja Davis was asked what she’d say to people who claimed content creation was a young person’s game, she replied, “Total nonsense.”