Older women facing multiple inequalities


Women over 50 experience a “plethora of inequalities” at work, including age and sex discrimination, that prevent them making career progress, says a new report on Scotland’s older women workers.


The study, conducted by the National Institute of Economic Research for Scotland’s Fair Work Convention, interviewed women over 50 in the finance and insurance and information and communications sectors. It found that older women cited their age and sex as key hurdles to career progression, and a cause of their lack of wellbeing at work.


The report identified recruitment and promotion procedures, a predominance of young people in management roles, reliance on new technology, and unequal pay as barriers affecting older women. However, it found that few employers agreed that age and gender prevented women workers progressing.


The Fair Work Convention has called on employers to “take urgent action” to support older women at work, including better monitoring, greater awareness of gender pay gaps, and more transparent pay structures.


The body’s co-chairs, Mary Alexander and Patricia Findlay, said: “The impacts of workplace policies and practices that systematically disadvantage women build cumulatively over an individual’s career. It cannot be left to individual older women to address these difficult issues on their own.”