It's complicated: age, gender, and lifetime discrimination against working women - the United States and the U.K. as examples

This article considers the effect on women of a lifetime of discrimination using material from both the U.S. and the U.K. Government reports in both countries make clear that women workers suffer from multiple disadvantages during their working lives, which result in significantly poorer outcomes in old age when compared to men. Indeed, the numbers are stark. In the U.S., for example, the poverty rate of women 65 years old and up is nearly double that of their male counterparts. Older women of color are especially disadvantaged. The situation in the U.K. is comparable. To capture the phenomenon, the article develops a model of Lifetime Disadvantage, which considers the major factors that on average produce unequal outcomes for working women at the end of their careers

Making Self-Regulation More than Merely Symbolic: The Critical Role of the Legal Environment

Using data from a sample of U.S. industrial facilities subject to the federal Clean Air Act from 1993 to 2003, this article theorizes and tests the conditions under which organizations’ symbolic commitments to self-regulate are particularly likely to result in improved compliance practices and outcomes. We argue that the legal environment, particularly as it is constructed by the enforcement activities of regulators, significantly influences the likelihood that organizations will effectively implement the self-regulatory commitments they symbolically adopt. We investigate how different enforcement tools can foster or undermine organizations’ normative motivations to self-regulate. We find that organizations are more likely to follow through on their commitments to self-regulate when they (and their competitors) are subject to heavy regulatory surveillance and when they adopt self-regulation in the absence of an explicit threat of sanctions. We also find that historically poor compliers are significantly less likely to follow through on their commitments to self-regulate, suggesting a substantial limitation on the use of self-regulation as a strategy for reforming struggling organizations. Taken together, these findings suggest that self-regulation can be a useful tool for leveraging the normative motivations of regulated organizations but that it cannot replace traditional deterrence-based enforcement

Cause, effect, and solution? The uneasy relationship between older age bias and age discrimination law

This chapter is a consideration of how the law in the UK and the US offers incomplete protection to disadvantage resulting from age bias in relation to older workers

Increasing the employment rate of older workers

The Communication from the European Commission entitled ‘Europe 2020: A Strategy for Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth’ includes the headline target of an employment rate of 75% of the population. This target employment rate is to be reached by, among others, increasing the involvement of older people in the work force and removing the obstacles to their employment. This article considers the employment rate of older workers, both from a historical and predictive standpoint. The makeup of the older European Union (EU) labour force and the types of work engaged in are discussed, with the United Kingdom and Italy as detailed examples. Initiatives at EU level are considered, including initiatives to tackle age discrimination at work and the call for more flexible labour markets. Consideration is then given to the United States as an example of a deregulated labour market. Trends in American older worker employment are examined. From this, the authors draw several lessons from the US experience and offer tentative conclusions about the way forward for the European labour market

Diverging doctrine, converging outcomes: evaluating age discrimination law in the United Kingdom and the United States

This article compares age discrimination law in the United Kingdom and the United States to discern convergences, and divergences in legal doctrine, the law's normative underpinnings, and societal outcomes

Decent work, older workers and vulnerability in the economic recession: a comparative study of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States

[Summary of the book containing this chapter:] This volume brings together classic articles which explore the increasingly crucial and relatively recent concept of age discrimination. Issues relating to an ageing workforce are now widespread as many employees are either working longer in order to compensate for depleted pensions; or, in countries where there are labor shortages among younger workers, employers are trying to induce older workers to remain in the workforce. The essays in this volume explore the evolution of legislation against age discrimination as well as the legal structures relating to age discrimination in the US (where legislation is more advanced), the European Union, Canada and Australia

Decent work, older workers, and vulnerability in the economic recession: a comparative study of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States

In countries with aging populations, the global recession presents unique challenges for older workers, and compels an assessment of how they are faring. To this end, the International Labour Organization's concept of decent work provides a useful metric or yardstick. Decent work, a multifaceted conception, assists in revealing the interdependence of measures needed to secure human dignity across the course of working lives. With this in mind, in three English-speaking, common law countries (Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), this Article considers several decent work principles applicable to older workers and provides evaluations in light of them. Relevant to the analysis is the role workplace law plays in each country in ameliorating or exacerbating older worker vulnerability. Although the recession affected each country to a different extent, and the response of national employers to the crisis varied significantly, the effects of the financial crisis on older workers are strikingly similar. The recession has affected the quality of work for older workers. For many, employment has become more fragile, inconstant and insecure. In all three nations, the recession also compromised older workers' ability to plan for and secure a key decent work precept, a dignified retirement. Yet stronger national differences emerge when evaluating labor regulations affecting older workers. While all three countries prohibit age discrimination to varying degrees, such prohibitions by themselves do not greatly contribute to employment security for older workers. General labor standards, such as those restricting termination and layoff or requiring severance pay, and the provision of a robust safety net, are just as important in forestalling older worker vulnerability. By using decent work as a touchstone, and looking broadly at the intersecting factors that contribute to older worker insecurity, the outlines of needed policy reforms become clear