Gendered Ageism and Organizational Routines at Work: The Case of Day-Parting in Television Broadcasting

Abstract

This article contributes to the study of gendered ageism in the workplace by investigating how the routine of dayparting in broadcasting participates in the social construction of an ideology of 'youthfulness' that contributes to inequality. Critical discourse analysis is applied to the final judgment of an Employment Tribunal court case where the British public service broadcaster, the BBC, faced accusations of discrimination on the basis of both age and gender. Three interrelated findings are highlighted. First, the ideology of youthfulness was constituted through discursive strategies of nomination and predication that relied on an inherently ageist and sexist lexical register of 'brand refreshment and rejuvenation'. Second, the ideology of youthfulness was reproduced through a pervasive discursive strategy of combined de-agentialization, abstraction and generalization that maintained power inequality in the workplace by obscuring the agency of the more powerful organizational actors while further marginalizing the weaker ones. Third, despite evidence that the intersection of age and gender produced qualitatively different experiences for individual organizational actors, in the legitimate and authoritative version of the truth constructed in the Tribunal's final judgment, ageism discursively prevailed over sexism as a form of oppression at work. These findings support the view that the intersection of age and gender in the workplace should be explored by taking into account different levels of analysis -individual, organizational and societal -and with sensitivity to the context. They also suggest that the notion of gendered ageism is still poorly articulated and that the lack of an appropriate vocabulary encourages the discursive dominance of ageism over sexism, making the intersection of the two more difficult to study and to address.

Inclusion climate: A multilevel investigation of its antecedents and consequences

“…While many firms have made an effort to remove the most overt barriers and reduce employment discrimination (Ely & Thomas, ), subtle barriers built into organizational systems continue to privilege employees from dominant social groups (Noon, ). As a result, employees from historically disadvantaged social groups feel less valued than other employees (Kulik, ; Spedale, Coupland, & Tempest, ). They view their organizations as less socially inclusive (Armstrong‐Stassen, ) and are less likely to develop ties with coworkers from dominant identity groups (Konrad, Seidel, Lo, Bhardwaj, & Qureshi, ).…”

A Critical Approach to the Demographics of Ageing: The Case of Oslo

“…Although the scope of this article does not allow for a deeper analysis of the gender gap, I believe gender is perhaps the most important contextual variable to have in mind when assessing population ageing. Age and old age are strongly framed by gender differences (see for example : Folbre et al, 2006: Folbre et al, , 2005: Folbre et al, , 2004Sara et al, 2003;Spedale et al, 2014). In this sense, when assessing population ageing under a critical demographic approach this particular aspect cannot be ignored.…”

Lost in time and space: temporal and spatial challenges facing older workers in a global economy from a career capital perspective

“…Research highlights that ageing combines with other types of inequality such as race, gender, and class creating individualised career capital paths (Dugger, 1999;Spedale et al, 2014). This distinction between high and low career capital we contend enables us to begin to understand the duality of later life prospects highlighted by Titmuss in the 1950s.…”

“…Yet there is a disconnect between policy makers' priority of extending working lives and the genuine challenges older workers face in their later life careers (Hirsch et al, 2000;Van Solinge and Henkens, 2007). For example, in Western contexts individual characteristics such as health, gender and caring responsibilities are particular challenges to later life careers (Flynn, 2008;Fleischmann et al, 2013;Spedale et al, 2014).…”