After all these months of grey skies, the sun dazzles and confuses. Dark, faceless figures stalk towards me. Strange times. The impulse to a different, more creative life wells up only with increasing force, it seems, as work and commuting drain and debilitate more every year and the fear of ending life in penury keeps slowly growing. I've been copy-editing papers by an economist whose latest research shows repeatedly that employing women in their fifties lowers a firm's productivity (not, I imagine, the finding he was expecting or hoping for). I can think of several reasons why this might be so, or be perceived as so, all of which fill me with anger and despair*. Trying not to shrink from the light, to find the human faces of the shadows as they bear down.
* If you're not sure what kind of thing I'm thinking of with regard to the potential of older women, among others, for lower productivity, see this article cited by my friend Maria at Small Change about how much more 'productive' an American psychiatrist has to be these days - a particularly shocking and poignant example, but one that can be extrapolated to almost any kind of job.
6 comments:
more wonderful chiaroscuro - you capture something of the weird confusion and unease of walking city streets with the sun in your face.
As someone who's been in the passenger seat of a 50-something woman's job search for the last year, the mere mention of research showing that makes a huge blossom of rage in my chest.
Dale, yes! I nearly told him I couldn't edit these papers because they upset me too much! I'm sure he was hoping to give evidence of the opposite, since his interest is in the ageing active population in Western countries and encouraging a better fit between employers' expectations and the potential employees available.
Wow... I can't see how employing women over 50 lowers the productivity of a firm. What kind of economic sector are we talking about here? And what's his methodology? Is he also looking at what hiring men over 50 means to productivity?
You can tell my blood is boiling over! There is a website that collects the stories of people over 50 looking for work:
http://www.overfiftyandoutofwork.com/
There are quite a few stories to listen to.... Might not be quantified research, but plenty of voices.
Maria, yes, they've also looked at men and not had the same finding.
I'm sure you're aware of the increasing extent to which only quantitative resarch is valued these days.
As I said, what most upsets me about this is that I can think of very good reasons why it might indeed be the case, or perceived to be the case.
To put it very unsubtly, I think it's likely that older women may be particularly reluctant to do a blatantly inadequate job in order to produce more units of whatever the measured outcome is, and more confident than younger ones in holding to their own standards on this.
Of course, this is no more than speculation on my part.
There are a lot of fifty somethings getting more and more uneasy about what the future will hold. I am one of them. It seems that we have to run faster to stay in the same place...
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