Female employees over age 50 receive fewer training opportunities than younger male workers because HR managers see them as a poor return on investment, according to a new study on age and gender bias. The finding was revealed by Dr. Almuth McDowall from Surrey University, who researched the allocation of training and development budgets.
She sampled the opinions of HR managers in 48 companies, using a series of fictional vignettes to contrast the decisions of HR managers when allocating funding for training and development. Each manager was given four scenarios consisting of character profiles of both young people aged 30 or younger and older employees aged 50 or more. Working with the scenario, they were asked to allocate a budget of £6000 across four employees and justify their decisions.
Dr. McDowall said the outcome mirrored the contrasting amount of training made available to older women and younger men in the UK, with the characters in the scenarios who were female and over fifty receiving far less of the available budget than younger male characters. When asked about this difference, the HR managers justified their decisions in terms of older employees and women being less “investment-worthy.”