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20 April 2007 / Jonathan Swift
Issue: 7269 / Categories: Features , Discrimination , Terms&conditions , Employment
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Pale, stale, male

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Can compulsory retirement ages survive the onslaught of equality legislation, asks Jonathan Swift

Is it a truth universally acknowledged that an older man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a discrimination claim? The overwhelming majority of people who have sought the protection of the American Age Discrimination in Employment Act 1967 have been men of a certain age. Hence the rise of the ‘pale stale male’, the stereotype equivalent for discrimination lawyers of the ‘dead white European male’ beloved of social historians. This is not altogether surprising in the US since its Act only seeks to protect those aged 40 and over and, within that class, those with the most to lose have tended to be men in professional and managerial positions.

COMBATING DISCRIMINATION

The prohibition on age discrimination contained within Council Directive 2000/78/EC (the Directive) is of a different nature. It is not aimed simply at discrimination against the old. Instead it seeks to combat unlawful discrimination “on grounds of…age”: in principle providing protection for people

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