{"id":1365,"date":"2017-10-23T08:00:54","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T12:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/?p=1365"},"modified":"2017-10-23T08:00:54","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T12:00:54","slug":"five-reasons-hire-older-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/five-reasons-hire-older-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Reasons Why You Should Hire an Older Woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tAs a member of the hiring committee of a nonprofit\u2019s board of trustees, I recently worked with an executive search firm to fill a CEO vacancy in the organization. The search firm representative asked us if we wanted to screen out women over fifty from the candidate pool. We were surprised and asked, \u201cWhy would we?\u201d The reply was, \u201cMost of our clients won\u2019t consider hiring women over fifty, and we don\u2019t want to waste your time or ours by including them if you want us to screen them out.\u201d Wow! This question was asked quietly, since it is illegal to discriminate based on age, but it was asked because this dynamic is so prevalent.\nMen are considered to be viable employees at older ages than women. Ashton Applewhite of the New York Times<\/em><\/a> cites a 2016 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research that \u201cfound \u2018robust\u2019 evidence that age discrimination in the workplace starts earlier for women and never relents.\u201d Applewhite explains that ageism, or discrimination based on age, \u201cis the result of a network of attitudes and institutional practices.\u201d In other words, it is baked into our social and workplace cultures that women over fifty are not valued.\nSally Koslow, writing for the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, cites a study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that nearly half\u201448.8 percent\u2014of women aged fifty-five to sixty-four are among the long-term unemployed. These numbers reflect the desire of older women to work but their difficulty in getting hired. Many older women want to work not only because they enjoy it but also because they often need to work. Koslow reports that, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security, \u201cwomen are 80 percent more likely than men to be impoverished at age sixty-five and older.\u201d\nWhy should you hire a woman over fifty? Applewhite suggests the following considerations:\n\n\n