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Have you ever been on the receiving end of the term 'an old fuddy-duddy'?
Has anyone ever called you 'an old fart'? If the answers to both of these questions are 'yes', then consider yourself a witness of ageism, the tendency modern society has to make value judgements of a person based upon their age. Gray Panthers, an organisation with aims to promote social justice, defines ageism as "...a systematic discrimination based upon the chronological age, and furthermore, using age to define individuals' capabilities and roles."
Ageism does not appear to be a universal phenomenon in human culture. Attitudes towards elderly people vary across societies and the more 'westernised' the prevailing culture is, the more it tends to take a negative view of old age. In the Middle East, old age means prestige. In Japan, an elderly widow is often regarded as a powerful figure in the family.

In the 1980's in America, the longer an employee stayed with a firm, the greater the salary. However, since the beginning of 1990's, with increased international competition and the fact that the required skills do not necessarily come with the lifetime of experience, gerontocracy (rule by and for the old) has been slowly usurped by meritocracy tinged with a cult of youth. The economics alone dictate that younger workers are generally 'cheaper' to employ for the company than their senior staff.

In 1979, the policy of mandatory policies changed the age of retirement from 65 to 70 in US firms. However, the exceptions are the employees of an organisation or a company which has less than 20 on a payroll, tenured college professors, and high authorities whose pensions will exceed $27,000 a year.

In 1988 the American Society for Personnel Administration and the Commerce Clearing House sponsored a business study. The results indicated that older workers were causing problems in almost half of the nation's companies. In percentages, the older 'plateaued' workers caused a number of problems:
65% clogged promotion channels
56% lower morale among co-workers and subordinates
49% lower overall productivity of department or unit
25% damaged relationships with customers and clients
21% increased absenteeism

On the other hand, there are those who claim that older emplyees have a very positive impact on the newcomers. Perhaps retirement should be viewed again as the reward for the years of social contribution and loyalty to a workplace. After they retire, older workers have probably earnt a time for leisure and diverting activities done for their own sake.
JL, a University librarian, had a friend in her sixties who had enough years of work experience to retire. However, she decided to keep the job although "she was not doing anything she was supposed to", says JL. "If you have somebody who is about 45 years old and is looking for a job, even with some 20 years of working experience, the chances are really low for this person to get employed. Some companies insist on younger and more attractive people regardless of other person's ability to do the job properly", says JL.
Anyway, although ageism is commonly used in describing discriminating attitude and behaviour towards older people, there are cases when the opposite happened. I know somebody whose age represents a problem in finding jobs or applying for scholarships. At the age of 21, my friend was looking for a job and ended up standing on the wrong side of many slammed doors. She used to tell me how every place she applied to for a job would require a certain number of years of previous working experinece. It seemed that there was not a single place where she would actually make her professional debut in the workplace.
"How do they expect me to have a working experience when there is nowhere interested in providing the first opportunity for beginners? One day I am going to be 50, without a job and then no-one will employ me anyway because 'I'll be too old'", she would say. This same person was decategorised from many scholarship applications because she was not old enough to apply for it. "I guess they assumed that I need to be over 30 to do my masters degree".

Any form of 'ism' discrimination can be discouraging, especially those that reflect prejudice against an aspect of your being, such as age, that cannot be changed or improved. It is hard to find the way out of it, unless we procede with the continual beauty treatments, liposuctions
and cosmetic surgery.
Worklife Solutions, Inc. have suggested a number of less drastic ways to beat ageism in order to get a job. For example, get advice from the whoever cuts your hair or sells clothes to you. At the same time, take the emphasis away from dates on your CV - in other words, highlight other important facts about you without highlighting when they happened. You can learn about computers, hang around with the younger crowd (the more people you know, the more perceptive you are), or simply just go for a job which appreciates a bit of 'grey'.
Apparently, younger computer programmers are valued precisely because they are relatively guiless and malleable, whereas consultants are mostly 'seasoned' people with real expertise. Nonetheless, unlike other 'isms', ageism does not represent a social threat as for instance racism can and does, but this does not mean that ageism is justifiable.

Tip
♥ Ageism : 연령차별주의
♥ lagging behind : 뒤떨어지다. 지체하다. 침체하다. 흥미 관심등이 옅어지다.
♥ sexism : 성차별주의
♥ racism : 인종차별주의
♥ handicappism : handicap(방해,곤란, 불이익, 여기서는 사회적 불이익을 뜻하는 것 같음) + ism(~주의)
♥ the oppressed : the + oppressed(the + 형용사급 : ~ 한 사람들<복수형취급>, 여기서는 수동태이므로 ~ 당하는 사람들) 억압받는 사람들, 차별받는 사람들
♥ discrimination : 구별, 식별(력), 판별(력), 안식(眼識), 차별, 차별 대우

Questions
1. Why our society prefer younger people?
2. Do you want to be looked young? and why?
3. Ageism is more serious problem to woman, what is the reason?
4. Suppose you're age is 40. If you can down your age,
   are you willing to change your age? why?

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