Double Jeopardy: Age Discrimination as a Gendered Phenomenon

This thesis is concerned with the working lives of mature aged women in the United States. More specifically, their probability of employment, expectations regarding finding another job, and salary in comparison to that of men are explored. Differences may occur due to the mutually reinforcing effect of age and gender discrimination, also called gendered ageism. As plethora of studies show, this mainly arises from negative stereotypes, based on inter alia sexual attractiveness and perceived lack of skills. In order to obtain empirical estimates, a binomial logistic and multivariate linear regression are applied to data from the US Health and Retirement Study. Some socio-demographic characteristics are included in the models as control variables. In particular, we show that, relative to mature aged men, mature aged women in the labor force (a) have odds of 0.73 to 1 of being employed; (b) expect the likelihood of finding an equally good job within the next few months to be 3.40 percentage point lower; and (c) earn 32 per cent less per year. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that discrimination even seems to occur between ‘younger’ and ‘older’ individuals within the mature aged labor force itself when it comes to employment and salary. These empirical results confirm the ‘double jeopardy’ experienced by mature aged women, and call for further reforms.