Age discrimination, also known as ageism, is when someone is treated differently or unfairly because of their age. It also includes how people are represented in the media, for example, which can affect the public perception of a particular age group.
Age discrimination can happen as an isolated incident or due to a policy or rule based on age. The effects of age discrimination can be far-reaching. They can impact a person’s job prospects, finances, quality of life and their confidence. Age discrimination must always be challenged to ensure nobody suffers due to their age.
What are the different types of age discrimination?
Age discrimination falls into four main categories, all of which are protected by the Equality Act. These categories are direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, harassment, and victimization. Let’s look at some examples of each below which may apply in the workplace before looking at each in more detail.
What are the different types of age discrimination?
Where an employee states that they will not offer someone a promotion or a job because they are too old or too young, for example.
Indirect discrimination
Where an employer offers training, but it is open only to those who have recently graduated. This therefore would exclude most older workers.
Harassment
Where a co-worker makes fun of someone’s age which was offensive. This can also apply if they make comments about someone else’s age, such as a person’s husband, wife or partner
Victimization
Where someone missed out on a promotion at work, for example, because they have reported or supported another colleague’s age discrimination complaint.
Direct discrimination
Direct discrimination happens when a person (or people) treats someone worse than others due to a protected characteristic – in this case, their age. Direct discrimination can also be when someone only thinks the other person has a protected characteristic, i.e., they think that they are older than they are. This is known as discrimination by perception.
Lastly, when it comes to direct discrimination, there is also discrimination by association, which means that someone is discriminated against because they are associated with someone who has that characteristic.
In a work situation, as mentioned above, an example of direct discrimination could be where an employer does not offer a promotion to an older employee due to their age and the fact that they’re nearer retirement, for example. Or it could be that only younger employees are offered the chance to do some training.
However, there are some situations when direct age discrimination is allowed but it must be for a good reason. This is also known as objective justification.
For example:
- A person applying for a job is legally allowed to work there due to being underage, for example if a construction company does not employ under-18s because they don’t believe it’s safe as statistics show that those under 18 suffer more accidents on building sites.
- A theatre company only auditions people in the right age group for the characters. It would not be appropriate to audition a 70-year-old man to play the role of a teenager, for example.
To be considered unlawful, the person must have experienced the alleged discrimination in a situation covered by the Equality Act such as when the person is receiving services or goods, or in the workplace.
Indirect discrimination
This happens when an organization has a blanket policy or arrangement for their customers or employees where it disadvantages some people. For example, a 20-year-old employee in a HR office cannot apply for a promotion because it requires a master’s qualification. However, it’s highly unlikely that any 20-year-old would have been able to achieve such qualifications because of their age.
There are also instances where indirect discrimination is permissible if the employer or organization has a good reason (objective justification).
Harassment
Harassment is a form of discrimination where someone offends another person or makes them feel degraded or humiliated, in this case due to their age. For example, a nurse mimicking the way that an elderly person is walking.
Other examples of such unwanted behaviour that could be considered age discrimination include:
- Written or verbal abuse.
- Offensive email or message content.
- Comments on social media or websites.
- Images (including memes and edited pictures).
- Facial expressions and physical gestures including mimicking.
These behaviors only need be unwanted on one occasion, whether or not the person on the receiving end has previously accepted such behavior.
Unlike direct and indirect age discrimination, harassment is never justifiable. Having said that, you can’t make an age-related harassment claim against an organization if they have done everything possible to prevent such harassment from occurring. It is possible, however, to claim against the person guilty of the harassment.
Victimization
Victimization is when a person is treated badly because they have supported someone who has been discriminated or because they themselves have complained about age discrimination. The Equality Act recognizes that by complaining about discrimination, someone may need extra protection.
Let us look at some examples of victimization:
- Someone is denied a promotion at work because they made a complaint about age discrimination whether or not they were the victim of that discrimination.
- An employee is made redundant shortly after raising a case of discrimination.
- An employee overhears a manager saying to a colleague that they’re an ‘old wrinkly’ and are ‘past it’ and so reports it but then suffers repercussions personally as a result.
Where could age discrimination take place?
Age discrimination can happen anywhere. However, there are certain places where it is more common such as in the workplace.
Age discrimination in the workplace can look like:
- Certain phrases in job adverts asking for applicants with over a certain number of years’ experience, requesting recent graduates or by asking for someone ‘young and enthusiastic’.
- Comments directly related to age such as implying that someone does not understand the latest technology or excluding someone from certain events that would typically appeal to a certain age group.
- An employer ‘lightening the load’ of an older employee by moving them from more lucrative or important projects. This can also be masked as beneficial for the employee.
- Encouragement to retire by offering retirement packages.
- Giving a promotion to a younger, much less qualified and/or experienced colleague.
Of course, the workplace is an environment where a lot of unconscious bias happens too. So, employers need to be aware of any biases they may have and have procedures in place to keep them in check.
Age discrimination also happens in other places. The Northern Ireland Youth Forum has gathered evidence as to how younger people are often discriminated against because of their age. It suggests that young people are often excluded from leisure and retail services on the grounds of age as well as suffering from negative stereotyping.
Some examples their members reported were:
- Medical professionals speaking to their parents/carers rather than directly to them.
- Public transport such as buses and taxis driving past without stopping or the way in which drivers have spoken to them.
- Discrimination from the police by being asked to separate into smaller groups or to move on from a certain place despite not doing anything wrong.
- Being refused entry into shops because they were in a large group or because they were wearing school uniform. Also, some reported being asked to leave their school bags at the door of a shop or were followed around shops by security staff.
Of course, these examples are far from exhaustive and show that age discrimination is common regardless of which end of the age spectrum someone is on.
Is age discrimination ever permitted?
However, before you go jumping the gun, there are instances where age discrimination is legally permitted. These are also outlined in the Equality Act for situations that are ‘objectively justified’.
Here are a few permitted examples:
- Fitness tests for certain job roles. An employer requiring a fitness test such as in the Fire Service. This may unwittingly exclude older people from doing the job as they are less likely to pass the test. However, this discrimination can be justified as firefighting requires immense fitness levels and people must be fit enough or the service would not work well.
- Holidays. Companies offering holidays to particular age groups such as 18–30s holidays or over 50s trips to bring people of that age together.
- Requesting proof of age. Products like fireworks, cigarettes and alcohol have age limits and, as such, it is not discriminatory for a business to ask for proof of age when someone is buying them.
- Age-related discounts. Offering cheaper entry to leisure facilities or a specially priced lunch for older people are permitted.
- Mobile home sites. Sites are allowed to set age restrictions on who can live on residential mobile home sites.
- Sports. Sporting competitions or tournaments are permitted to be based on age for competitors.
- Length of service benefits. Employers can reward employees for their length of service such as offering facilities, discounts or gifts as long as the employer can justify the reasoning for such perks (company loyalty, for example).
- Minimum wage. It is not considered discriminatory to pay a younger worker the lower minimum wage.