By: Alec Hawks
In all aspects of life in today’s society, age inequality is one of the most over looked issues. An article written by Bonnie Marcus of Forbes in 2018 sheds light on the issue of age discrimination in the work place, and also mentions how gender plays a role into that. She reminds the audience of how today’s society puts so much emphasis on physical appearance. Women face this issue often as pressure is unfairly put on them to maintain a certain physical appearance. As women get older and their physical appearance may not be what it used to be, it subjects them into higher chances of losing promotions or positions to the male dominant work place or younger applicants. The article also states the glaring truth that appearance resulting from aging hurts women’s opportunities more than men’s. The hardest thing about making change in the age discrimination that goes on in many corporate offices, is the claim businesses must cut their costs, and typically older employees who have been at the company for a while have higher salaries. This allows business’s to escape lawsuits and justify that they did the moves based off of money. In reality, many companies are trying to rid themselves of “aged” employees.
I thought this article connected everything we have been studying in class as our focus for the current chapter was age inequality, but we just finished up the chapter discussing gender inequality. It is unfortunate that we live in a world where all these inequalities exist, but it is even more unfortunate that they go hand in hand. This article connects current issues well and explains how change has been difficult due to certain barriers. As read in previous readings, since the dominant group has the power to control what goes and what does not in the work place, they find ways to follow their agenda while using excuses such as budget cuts to rid their companies of “aged” women. It is an uphill battle for people aging in the work place, but change is hopefully coming soon as more and more people are bringing attention to a large inequality issue that has slipped to the back burner of people’s minds in the past. A lot of the theories and reasoning in the class textbook do a solid job of explaining the connection between inequalities and I thought this article from Forbes was stronger because it attempts to do the same. Showing how issues breed each other into worse issues can be powerful when trying to explain why the issues exist in the first place.
Word Count: 432
Alec's Sociology Studies 