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Combating Ageism in the Workplace and Elsewhere


Summary

We conducted an assessment of age discrimination in the workplace and found that half of all workers who responded to our survey experienced some form of age discrimination. Women were more likely to be victimized by age discrimination.

As a result of this survey, we are conducting workshops and developing webinars to combat age discrimination in the workplace. We found that discrimination made older workers feel isolated, invisible, lonely, marginalized, and at times resulting in retirement earlier than they had wished.

We are proposing personal, social, and political engagement to combat age discrimination. We plan to make the information gathered/created available to the public and to our local community. Ageism is a critical social problem which needs to be addressed on the personal, social, and political level. Global population ageing is a reality and twenty-five percent of the population cannot be marginalized by discrimination.

Key facts

Main target group: Older people in general

Sector(s): Labor

Desired outcome for older people:
Build and maintain relationships

Other issues the Age-friendly practice aims to address:
  • Ageism
  • Elder abuse
  • Intergenerational activities
  • Technologies

Contact details

Name: Jasmin Tahmaseb-McConatha

Email address: jtahmasebmcconatha@wcupa.edu


Age-friendly practice in detail (click to expand):

Engaging the wider community

Project lead: Research institution

Older people’s involvement: Older people were involved in the age-friendly practice at multiple or all stages

Details on older people’s involvement: Older workers helped plan the project, evaluate the results and write summary statements as well as share the results during talks, conversations, and community meetings.

Moving forward

Has the impact of this age-friendly practice been analysed: No

Do you plan to evaluate your age-friendly practice? Yes

Expansion plans:
We are developing a webinar to make our results more widely available.

Looking back

Challenges:
Motivation of participants, feelings of helplessness that any change is possible, getting the information disseminated to the community.