I couldn't count the number of men who've contacted me over the past 15 years to discuss discrimination against older job applicants. I've written about the experiences of quite a few of these men, and for all of them the unremitting rejection of their applications for a job in their longtime industry has been soul destroying. They all had extensive experience and knowledge and an eagerness to work but none could get to the short list. Usually their application was not even acknowledged. The problem was that age - and these men were as young as 40 - was seen as old fashioned, and it may be, too, that employers were inclined to see mature men as winding down to retirement and resistant to change. Women of mature age didn't seem to suffer this age discrimination, at least not in some industries.
Well, a government-funded and extensive survey by Monash University has found that after decades of discrimination against mature workers employers are, suddenly, putting people of senior years at the top of the recruiting list. According to the survey of 600 major organisations, 50 per cent of public service organisations and 40 per cent of private employers prefer now to employ people over age 55. Research leader Professor Philip Taylor describes this as a significant and surprising shift and the first time in his 19 years of studying employer attitudes that he's seen such a willingness to employ seniors.
What's going on? Is it that employers are recognising that experience is more important than beauty? That the increasing number of mature Australians prefer to deal with mature people in matters of consequence?
Perhaps. But I believe we are emerging from the age of youth, an age at least three decades long and one that seems to have matched the rise of television as an entertainment media. It may be that the increasing population of mature Australians is forcing an acceptance that age is not ugly or even undesirable. It may be also just part of the cycle of attitudes that seems always to have Australians swinging from one extreme to the other. I hope we don't come to spurn young people!
Have you or someone you know been a victim of age discrimination? Do you agree that we may be emerging from the age of youth?
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