Abstract

There is little doubt that sexism and ageism still exist. To remedy these "isms," there are laws to protect both women and older workers from discrimination in the workplace, namely Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("Title VII"), which prohibits sex discrimination as well as discrimination based on many other protected categories, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 ("ADEA"), which prohibits age discrimination. Despite these protections, an older woman cannot bring a claim based on the fact that she feels she was discriminated against because she is an older woman. In other words, her claim must be brought either on the basis of her sex or on the basis of her age, but not on the basis of both her sex and age combined. This Article proposes to remedy what this Author believes is a serious shortcoming in our employment discrimination laws.

This Article proposes that sex plus age should be treated as a separate protected subclass much in the same way as sex plus race is considered. This proposal is based on this Article's thesis that older women are treated differently (and much more negatively) than older men and younger women, both in employment situations and by society as a whole.

This abstract has been adapted from the author's introduction.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2003

Publication Information

81 Denver University Law Review 79-111 (2003)

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