The You: Part Two Resource Hub

Ageing and Ageism
Ageing and Ageism

As we cover in Chapter 3, ageism is rife throughout society and our work places. It is the biggest ‘ism’ of them all.

Our population is ageing. Our workforces are ageing. Across much of the West and China, the number of people aged between twenty and forty-nine is set to remain relatively flat over the next decade while the number of those of us over fifty will continue to rise.

Yet ‘ageism is the most commonly experienced form of prejudice and discrimination in the UK and across Europe’ according to the Royal Society for Public Health report titled ‘That Age Old Question’.

Every second person in the world is believed to hold ageist attitudes, according to the World Health Organization’s ‘Global Report on Ageism’, published in March 2021.

There are now more older workers in Britain than younger workers. A third are 50+ while fewer than a quarter are 25-34. The percentage of over seventies in either full or part time employment has almost doubled in the last decade.

Yet, more than two-thirds of companies consider older age a competitive disadvantage, according to a recent HBR and Deloittes survey of over ten thousand companies. 41% of workers in their fifties believe that ‘age discrimination in the workplace is a serious issue’, according to Aviva.  It is!

The power to overcome ageism lies within every single one of us: it is all about attitude.

Some key resource web sites we found that you may find interesting: