Let's talk about Ageism
Samantha Sieverling Direction with Heart ??
Senior Agile Coach, Scrum Master, Product Owner, Trainer and Mentor
As often happens, I was laying in bed awake this morning, when I should have been sleeping, lol.?I was thinking about ageism.?An ugly word and an uglier situation.?It seems that the World Health Organization(WHO) has some pretty strong things to say about ageism:
Ageism refers to the stereotypes (how we think), prejudice (how we feel) and discrimination (how we act) towards others or oneself based on age.
Half the world’s population is ageist against older people.?
Whoa.?Wait a minute.?How can that be??They go on to talk about the fact that kids as young as 4 years old pick up on ageism and it can shape how they think and behave for the rest of their life and can impact them and how they feel about themselves as they age.
Everyday ageism was prevalent in 93.4% of folks, in a study done by National Library of Medicine.?
Forbes wrote an article about more of the WHO data and they talk about the fact that like all -ism’s, it is complicated, layered and it intersects and interacts with all other forms of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.?Yikes.
On top of all that, if you are older, your pay is impacted. Say what? ?So as a woman, I was already being paid less than men and now as an older woman, my pay scale continues to go down.?I am less likely to get the compensation that I would get if I were 10 to 20 years younger.?Even though I have WAY more experience and can bring a lot more to the table for a company or employer.
As an older woman, these days I am feeling this, upfront and center.?As I have aged, let’s just say that my physical being has not aged as gracefully as my mental being.?As a result, I have started to notice some things, some things that are making me a tad uncomfortable.
I am ignored or talked over in meetings.?That never used to happen.?People don’t see me as someone who can get things done, based on my physical appearance alone!?People more often try to tell me what to do, apparently because they think that I may be unable to determine this on my own. People assume that I am at the “end of my career.”?The list goes on (and on, sadly).
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I am noticing that other women of the same age, are often getting treated the same way.?Perhaps it’s the blue car syndrome, where if you buy the blue car, you start noticing all the blue cars??Or maybe as a society we do not see the value in older women?
What I know about myself, is that I have become the confident powerful woman that I was always supposed to be.?My mind is stronger and smarter than it has ever been.?I have outgrown many of my self-limiting beliefs.?I feel like I am just getting started, in so many new ways.?
I may not have the infinite energy that I use to have when I was younger, that is true, but I am not all used up and I still have a lot to offer the world.?I hope that people can learn to see past age (and all the other ‘isms out there) and start to see the experiences that those of us of a certain age can bring to the table.
PS: As I was searching for a photo to purchase for the article, I found a disturbing lack of photo's of teams of older women that were NOT doing retirement-like activities.
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