Early-Career Women Suffer From Ageism More Than Any Other Group, According To Report

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Early-Career Women Suffer From Ageism More Than Any Other Group, According To Report

When women think about ageism at work, it’s usually at the tail end of our career. But does ageism in the workplace for women go both ways?

For example, do women get discriminated against for being too young—and then again, as they reach a more mature age?

“The punchline is, they do,” says Alexis Krivkovich, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company. “Women feel their age impacts their ability for opportunity. The real whammy for women is that that number is even higher earlier in their career. Nearly half of women under 30 say that their age is impacting their opportunities, and that is much higher than the percentage of men reporting the same. So you get hit on both sides.”

According to the 10th edition of the McKinsey and LeanIn.Org Women in the Workplace report, 49% of women under 30 have experienced ageism, compared to 38% of women over 60. Of particular interest is that levels of ageism equal out between men and women once they reach 60, so the disparity is more pronounced in younger workers.

The “broken rung” data supports this. The broken rung describes the attrition of women at each level of the corporate ladder. “This isn’t just something they feel; this is something the data shows,” says Krivkovich. “We joke in our team that it’s a bit like the avocado phenomenon: ‘Not ready, not ready, not ready, ripe, too late!'”

Rachel Thomas, CEO & co-founder of Lean In elaborates on Krivkovich’s point. “We’ve been looking at those broken rung numbers for years, and 30 years of social science research shows that gender bias has an outsized impact on early-career women. This is largely because we tend to promote men based on potential, and we promote women on what they’ve already accomplished.”

She added, “And when you’re early in your career with a shorter resume and less experience, there’s much less to point to. This ageism finding was the last piece that clicked into place to explain early career women being disadvantaged from the moment they stepped into Corporate America.” The report shows that for every 100 men promoted to the level of manager, only 81 women achieve the same.

Why is the pipeline this way? Krivkovich explains how when they first started researching the broken rung, they thought something was happening at the top. “When we dug into it, though, the biggest inequity was actually at the start. The first step up from an individual contributor to a management position is the most imbalanced between men and women. The reason is because that’s where a lot of structural bias that’s accumulated over decades is buried and rooted. Those promotional decisions don’t have the scrutiny or oversight that a senior HR leadership team might put on a key hire in the C-suite.”

Fighting Ageism At Work

“Younger women are twice as likely to experience age-focused micro-aggressions than young men,” says Thomas. It’s the perfect storm of ageism and sexism, and that combination can be devastating. But it’s not all doom and gloom. “One bright spot is that younger women are really ambitious,” says Thomas. “They are the employees of the future. They’re more committed to diversity. They represent a lot of the change we need to see in the workplace.”

What company wouldn’t want to harness that talent and energy? But things only change where companies invest attention and resources. We’ve started to see the numbers of women in leadership positions trend more positively because companies have invested so much energy there. Companies must put similar time and attention on gender parity throughout all levels of the organization.

Another solution is facing the issue head-on. “There’s a lot of research that shows that tough talk about what you’re up against can be quite empowering,” says Thomas. “Because then you know not to take in the negative experiences. You learn to reframe.”

Most importantly, we need to keep the conversation going and draw attention to the experiences of young women at work. The more this topic is front and center, the more we can build workplace allies to help stop micro-aggressions in the moment and advocate for women at every step of the promotional cycle.

“Progress is not parity,” says Krivkovich.”We’ve got to keep going.”

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