GETTING SENIOR ISSUES ON THE AGENDA
Kaskie notes that the rise of the diversity,
equity and inclusion movement largely has bypassed the consideration of ageism and its impact, including in the workplace, and De Medeiros says that the increasing care taken to use preferred terms for groups of people has yet to extend to older people. That exclusion has made it more difficult to gain a foothold in policy discussions related to diversity efforts. De Medeiros says policymakers are
insulted because of their age for evidently problematic reasons. “Age is often viewed as a negative,
especially when people aren’t happy with a certain policymaker,” de Medeiros says. “We can think about the accusations of
Biden having cognitive deficits or we saw this when John McCain ran as well. It’s something we see time and time
again. They get demonized for their age. “Then, on the other hand, we haven’t
heard Anthony Fauci called out for his age. So, it can depend on the particular indi- viduals whether age is villainized or not. It’s unfortunately a fallback when people blame things on age when they’re not happy with other things, and it’s a huge obstacle. It’s this socially acceptable way of criticizing people that nobody seems to be that bothered by.”
The pandemic’s impact Vanderburg believes there are signs that the pandemic both made ageism worse and ex- posed existing ageism. For instance, she noted that two viral
hashtags on social media referred to the coronavirus pandemic as #BoomerRemover and #GrandmaKiller. “This sort of thing exposed the ageism that
has always been there,” Vanderburg says. De Medeiros believes COVID-19 exacer-
bated ageist behaviors in the workplace, too, pointing to reporting that older workers may have missed out on professional opportuni- ties due to employers taking “protectionist” stances that keep them home. Among the policy issues that Vanderburg
says stood out during the pandemic were that nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities were not prioritized for personal protective equipment, and “presumably well-meaning policymakers were issu- ing stay-at-home orders that
targeted
older people, while suggesting that younger people could carry on.”
In addition, a political figure suggested
that grandparents should sacrifice them- selves for the economy and “within a few months that same idea was emerging in economic policy reports,” Vanderburg says. “Older people were disproportionately
moved out of the workforce, and because of the current weak state of age discrimina- tion laws and the lack of public interest in devoting workforce development efforts at older people, they continue to remain unemployed,” she says.
Awareness, then action Mutchler believes increased awareness of ageism is cause for optimism, even if for- midable challenges remain. “I think we've made progress and aware-
ness, and that I think is at least a positive,” Mutchler says. “People are talking about it more,
acknowledging it more, and obviously that kind of thing has to happen in order for progress to really be made. But there still are a lot of barriers to figure out before we can implement real change.” Changing demographics including the
aging of the baby boomer generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) could bring attention to aging issues and ageism in the policy realm with newly sharp focus.
See yourself in policy However, a crucial obstacle that limits the discussion of aging in public policy is that “when we talk about older people, we don’t recognize that we’re talking about our- selves,” de Medeiros says. “It’s important to know that aging isn't
about someone else,” de Medeiros says. “It's about all of us. We're all aging. And, ironically, we all want to live as long as we can, but when people do, they’re penalized for it by being devalued.” As an example of how a lack of aware-
ness of aging issues’ universality can impact policy, Kaskie points to the abundance of resources available for the child-related needs of parents in the workforce but the relative dearth of resources for those same workers tied to helping to care for their own parents. “There's a lot of employers who just
aren't even aware of that, nor do their employees think about asking for it,” Kaskie says. “We need to be more focused on that and elevating those parts of the conversa- tion to improve policies.” Ultimately, D’Antonio says, the more
people see themselves in policy issues tied to aging, the more progress can be made. “It's not only an impact for people over the age of 60, or over the age of 65, but as
Even as the demographic of older adults has become less uniform, they still frequently are viewed as a singular voting bloc, ignoring the complex inter- generational dynamic that exists.
“We’ve been talking for a long time about
boomers eventually coming into old age, and here they are, and they're as activist as ever, they are healthier than their older cohorts, they want to be involved, and they don't want to be talked down to,” Mutchler says. “I think that when you have a large co-
hort, even though it is a very diverse cohort, in terms of politics, cultural background, and all those kinds of things, it does sort of demand attention in a way that smaller ones did not.”
12 SENIOR LIVING EXECUTIVE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022
we look at policies in family caregiving, as we look at policies in nursing homes, as we look at policies in services provided, we can see that they actually benefit us all across generations,” D’Antonio says. “I don’t think it’s really understood how
these policies benefit all of us. It’s not an us versus them thing. It’s not about supporting one generational group versus another. It’s about benefiting all of us.”
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