Turning age into agency: A qualitative longitudinal investigation into older jobseekers' agentic responses to ageism.

Despite existing laws prohibiting age discrimination in employment and hiring practices, ageism creates inequalities between jobseekers because of their age. Deeply manifested ageist practices take place in everyday interactions within the labor market, complicating changes in career trajectories during late working life. Bringing the time dimension into studies on ageism and individual agency, we narratively examined qualitative longitudinal interviews with 18 older jobseekers from Finland to better understand the role of time and temporality in agentic practices that older jobseekers employ to counteract forms of ageism. Older jobseekers exhibited various resilient, and reworked strategies in response to ageism depending on their diverse social and intersectional positions. As their positions changed over time, jobseekers employed different strategies, highlighting the relational and temporal dimensions of individual agency in labor market decisions. The analyses suggest that acknowledging the dynamics between temporality, ageism, and labor market behavior is vital for creating effective and inclusive policies and practices to tackle inequalities in late working life.

Researching Time and Ageism: Applications of Qualitative Longitudinal Research to the Field.

Interest in ageism research has grown immensely since the term was coined. Despite methodological innovations to study ageism in different settings and the application of different methods and methodologies to the topic, qualitative longitudinal studies investigating ageism are still underrepresented in the field. Through qualitative longitudinal interview data with four individuals of the same age, this study explored the applications of qualitative longitudinal research on ageism, highlighting its potential benefits and challenges to the multidisciplinary study of ageism and to gerontological research. The paper presents four distinctively different narratives through which individuals "do," "undo," and "challenge" ageism in their interview dialogues over time. Doing this underlines the importance of understanding the heterogeneity and intersectionality among encounters, expressions, and dynamics of ageism. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential contributions that qualitative longitudinal research makes to ageism research and policy.

Quality of work community and workers' intention to retire.

PURPOSE: To study the workers' perception of the quality of work community and its association with intention to retire early, separately among women and men working in Finnish postal service. METHODS: A questionnaire survey was sent to all Finnish postal services employees aged ≥ 50 years in 2016 and 44% (n = 2096) replied to the survey (mean age 56.3, 40% women). Employee's intention to retire before statutory retirement was measured on a scale of 1-5 and dichotomized. The quality of work community was defined by four composite variables: equality at work, flexibility at work, supportive work environment and health or other reason and trichotomized by their tercile values. Odds ratio (ORs) and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for associations of quality of work community with intention to retire were calculated separately for men and women using log binomial regression models adjusted for potential confounders. RESULTS: About one-third of respondents intended to retire early with no significant gender difference in retirement intention. Low equality at work (women OR 2.77, 95% CI 1.60-4.81; men 2.84, 1.80-4.48) and low flexibility at work (women 3.30, 1.94-5.60; men 2.91, 1.88-4.50) was associated with higher likelihood of intention to retire. Among women intention to retire was found less likely due to low supportive work environment (0.52, 0.31-0.89) and among men due to intermediate health or other reason (0.65, 043-0.98). CONCLUSION: The results highlight the importance of the quality of work community as well as the promotion of work-related health in order to encourage employees to remain at workforce for longer.

Ageism in Working Life: A Scoping Review on Discursive Approaches.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: This review investigates the contribution of discursive approaches to the study of ageism in working life. It looks back on the 50 years of research on ageism and the body of research produced by the discursive turn in social science and gerontology. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: This study followed the 5-step scoping review protocol to define gaps in the knowledge on ageism in working life from a discursive perspective. About 851 papers were extracted from electronic databases and, according to inclusion and exclusion criteria, 39 papers were included in the final review. RESULTS: The selected articles were based on discursive approaches and included study participants along the full continuum of working life (workers, retirees, jobseekers, and students in training). Three main themes representing the focal point of research were identified, namely, experiences of ageism, social construction of age and ageism, and strategies to tackle (dilute) ageism. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Discursive research provides undeniable insights into how participants experience ageism in working life, how ageism is constructed, and how workers create context-based strategies to counteract age stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. Discursive research on ageism in the working life needs further development about the variety of methods and data, the problematization of age-based labeling and grouping of workers, and a focus on the intersection between age and other social categories. Further research in these areas can deepen our understanding of how age and ageism are constructed and can inform policies about ways of disentangling them in working life.

Intention to Retire in Employees over 50 Years. What is the Role of Work Ability and Work Life Satisfaction?

BACKGROUND: We investigated work ability and trajectories of work life satisfaction (WLS) as predictors of intention to retire (ITR) before the statutory age. METHODS: Participants were Finnish postal service employees, who responded to surveys in 2016 and 2018 (n = 1466). Survey measures included ITR, work ability and WLS. Mixture modelling was used to identify trajectories of WLS. A generalized linear model was used to determine the measures of association (Risk Ratios, RR; 95% Confidence Intervals, CI) between exposures (work ability and WLS) and ITR. RESULTS: Approximately 40% of respondents indicated ITR. Four distinct trajectories of WLS were identified: high (33%), moderate (35%), decreasing (23%) and low (9%). Participants with poor work ability (RR 1.79, 95% CI 1.40-2.29) and decreasing WLS (1.29, 1.13-1.46) were more likely to indicate an ITR early compared to the participants with excellent/good work ability and high WLS. Job control mediated the relationship between ITR and work ability (9.3%) and WLS (14.7%). Job support also played a similar role (14% and 20.6%). CONCLUSIONS: Work ability and WLS are important contributors to the retirement intentions of employees. Ensuring workers have appropriate support and control over their work are mechanisms through which organisations may encourage employees to remain at work for longer.

Immune to ageism? Men's perceptions of age-based discrimination in everyday contexts.

Despite long-term, conceptually and theoretically refined discussions, the phenomenon of ageism still remains empirically under-developed. To better understand the diversity of ageism, its contextual variations and gender-specific dynamics in people's daily lives, this study focuses on how different interactional contexts shape men's perceptions of ageism. Using data from 67 thematic personal interviews with 23 middle and working class men aged 50-70, this study contributes to the sorely lacking, empirically based and nuanced understanding of how ageism is experienced, and adds to the research on the internalization of ageism which to date has primarily focused on older women's experiences. Key findings are as follows: 1) men are not totally immune to ageism, but rather, 2) the experiences and interpretations of ageism are structured by the interactional context in question, 3) acts and expressions interpreted as discriminative in one context become defused in others, and that 4) in family contexts positive ageism represents a naturalized order of things within intergenerational relations. The study contributes to the existing body of work on age negotiations and on the ways in which chronological age as a cultural resource functions in interaction. It also underlines that adopting a gender and context sensitive approach into ageism opens up promising avenues for further conceptual development.