Ageism exists. It is awful, and I am grateful to know about it, because what we can name, we can fight.

The word is younger than I am. Dr. Robert Neil Butler, an American physician, psychiatrist, and gerontologist, coined it in 1968, in the thick of the Civil Rights movement. He modeled it on racism and sexism, and the title of his 1969 essay says it plainly: “Age-ism: Another Form of Bigotry.”

Butler knew what he was defending. Raised by his grandparents on a New Jersey chicken farm, he said he learned from his grandmother the strength and endurance of older people. He spent his life honoring it: as founding director of the National Institute on Aging, as founder of the first department of geriatrics at an American medical school, and as author of Why Survive? Being Old in America, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1976. He died at 83 and never retired. He lived his message.

I have lived the other side of it.

Applying for work in my late 50s and 60s, I was told, “You have too much experience.” And, “Why not take early retirement and enjoy your life?”

As a headhunter, I heard it raw. Companies asked directly how old a candidate was. They said a person had “high mileage.” That they were “not running an old age home.” They questioned “personal energy” and “keeping up.” One asked me whether a candidate had “enough gas left to even get to work.”

Mileage. Gas. As if a person were a used car.

I am far from alone. AARP’s 2025 research found that 64% of workers 50 and older have seen or experienced age discrimination in the workplace, a number that has not budged since 2024.

And here’s the most dangerous part: we can do it to ourselves. We absorb society’s pre-stamped verdict (retire, fade away, step aside) and we too often agree with it. Self-discrimination is ageism turned inward. It is the same bigotry, and we are the ones living it.

The good news is that some employers know better. BMW has long been singled out for how it values its older workers’ skills. CVS Health runs a program called Talent Is Ageless, built to recruit and retain people 50 and older. These companies are not being charitable. They are being smart. Experience, judgment, and knowledge are assets.

Awareness is key. Knowledge is essential. Action is everything.

Notice ageism. Name it. Refuse it, in the hiring office and in the mirror.

Thanks – Michael Feeley (he, him)

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This matters too – Where Are You Being An Ageist – Against Yourself.

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