Older female professional workers may experience a double bias of age and sex and a perception by their employers they are expendable with no major loss to the company
Discrimination against older women including high-end experienced female executives in the workplace is a persistent issue, often manifesting as subtle or overt biases in hiring, promotion, in the daily workplace environment, and termination. In New Jersey, both federal and state laws provide robust protections for older worker, particularly women, who may face the compounded effect of both age and sex discrimination.
If you are an older woman and your employer has begun discriminating against you, you should contact this office immediately for a free consultation. I have represented public and private employees who were discriminated against and was successful in recovering financial compensation for their emotional pain and suffering and moneys for past lost wages and projected future lost wages. Call today for a free consultation.
INTERSECTION OF MULTIPLE LEGALLY PROTECTED CHARACTERISTICS.
Some employees are subjected to discrimination based on the intersection of multiple legally protected characteristics, such as race and sex, age and disability, sex and age. There is frequently an increased bias against an employee when there is an intersection of two protected classes, i.e., “older age” + “female sex;” “minority race + “female sex”; “disability + female sex.” There is a synergy when the interaction of two separate bias components exists. It may create something potentially more discriminatory than bias against one protected class alone. When a NJ Employee Has an Autoimmune Disease and Experiences Age Discrimination.
Forms of Discrimination Against Older Women
Older women in New Jersey workplaces who experience the compounded age/sex bias may face:
Hiring Barriers: Older women who apply for work may be passed over in favor of younger, often male, candidate - even when their experience, education and qualifications are equal or better. Although potential employers may not ask for an applicant’s age, it is frequently discerned from an employee’s resume, particularly when a candidate has an impressive professional employment history and lists career achievements going back decades. While for a male, this impressive professional history may be a significant advantage in obtaining new employment, for female applicants, it does not have a similar reverberation. For an older female professional, the potential employer will only perceive the female applicant’s older age as the real and sole reason that she is no longer at her last position, and forced to seek a new one.
Promotion Barriers: Older women may be judged more harshly in their yearly evaluations than their male counterparts. They may be assigned higher numbers in metrics which they are expected to achieve. Older women might be viewed as acting ungrateful and insubordinate toward a supervisor for asserting themselves in situation where a male would be viewed as engaging in an appropriate professional dialogue for expressing views and offering business counter-suggestions that are not in align with the evaluator. 12/ 11/2023 NJ Sex Discrimination Attorney, I’m a Female Executive Unfairly Evaluated. Older women may be set up to fail by not being included on essential emails, in digital and in-person meetings, and company sponsored networking opportunities; or offered continuous training to expand their work-related skills. Bergen County, New Jersey Sex Discrimination Lawyer.
Targeted Layoffs: When companies target an older woman for a termination, they will often characterize it as a layoff due to a business restructuring plan or for budget cuts.
Devious employers sometime use the ruse of a business “restructure plan” to take effect for the sole purpose of bolstering their bogus allegation that the employee’s position is being eliminated. This bogus excuse is to mask their illegal discrimination in the firing decision. To continue to bolster this false narrative, the formal title of the job position may get changed, while the actual job responsibilities which are assigned to a new younger replacement hire will be identical to, or essentially similar to, the responsibilities that were held by the older terminated employee. This was exactly the situation in a case I filed, where my 70 year old client was terminated, allegedly because they eliminated her position to save money in a new business restructuring plan. With the accounting analytics and expert report of my forensic accountant, I was able to demonstrate that the employer was spending significantly more money on salaries and employee benefits after they terminated my client in the bogus “business restructuring plan”. The case settled shortly thereafter for multiple high six figures. New Jersey Age Discrimination Lawyer.
Rise of Artificial Intelligence Utilized by Corporations in Business Decisions: With the rise of AI used by corporations incorporated into management decisions and the resultant running of their HR Departments, AI can influence the targeting of employees with certain characteristics. The assessments for selecting employees for promotions or demotions could be prone to bias in the selection process when protected characteristics are a functionality of AI algorithms and machine learning applications.
A potential outcome of AI applications in the context of employment discrimination entails an increased risk of adverse consequences for employees with certain legally “protected” characteristics, such as disability and age, according to a study published by the Department of Labor and an independent research group. An AI tool may have algorithms that inadvertently (or by design) discriminate against certain groups when analyzing resumes or making hiring decisions, such as people of certain sex, race, age, or with disabilities. See NJ Employment Discrimination Attorney, Tech Development Workers and AI Discrimination.
Poor Performance Evaluations for the First Time: Unscrupulous scheming employers, fearing a subsequent lawsuit after they terminate a person, may establish a paper trail in the employee’s file, in a attempt to prove they have a legitimate legal defense to a subsequent allegation of illegal termination. This is frequently done by giving the targeted employee an artificially and undeserved low scores on their Employee Performance Evaluations.
Many cases have alleged facts demonstrating an intersection effect of “older age” + “female sex” may result in an exacerbated discrimination greater than bias against either “older age” or “female sex” alone. A typical fact pattern demonstrating the intersection effect of “older age” + “female sex” is similar to one filed by female in her late 50's, who was an employee for a school district in New Jersey. The older female filed an age discrimination lawsuit against the district, alleging she was passed over for a job promotion multiple times due to her age, in favor of younger, less experienced candidates who were hired for the higher-up positions. She alleged she had extensive experience and interviewed for the position but was not hired despite her experience. Instead, a male in his twenties was hired, who would serve as the older woman’s supervisor. In another job position in which she sought a promotion, she alleges after she applied, the district instead hired a woman in her 20's with less experience. After she complained, she alleges the school terminated her and hired someone younger to fill her position. While nothing has been proven as to whether in this particular instance, there was any illegal discrimination or whether there were legitimate and legal reasons for the districts’ actions, it goes to the point that a significantly older female may find herself displaced by a significantly younger person, irrespective of whether it be a significantly younger female or a significantly younger male.
Government statistics for July 2025 demonstrate that women in the United States over age 55 had only approximately one third of the rate of employment as they had during the ages of 45 to 55, i.e., a two-thirds drop of employment for women. By contrast, the rate of employment for men during that same period, July 2025, demonstrate that men over 55 still had approximately half of the rate of employment, as during the ages of 45 to 55, i.e., only a 50% drop of employment. See NJ Sex Discrimination Attorney Males Paid more than Females for Doing Essentially the Same Job.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
I have represented public and private employees who were illegally discriminated against and was successful in recovering financial compensation for their emotional pain and suffering and moneys for lost wages, both for past lost wages and projected future lost wages. If you think your employer is illegally discriminating against you, you should contact this office immediately for a free consultation. I accept discrimination and whistleblower cases from all over New Jersey and have locations in Southern, Central and Northern NJ to meet with clients.
If You Quit Your Job, You May Lose Right to Prevail in a Lawsuit
In many instances of discrimination, if you quit your job, you may lose right to prevail in a lawsuit unless you first take certain legally required measures to preserve your job while you are still employed. If you are thinking of handing in a resignation letter, or think you will be fired (or have already been terminated), you should contact this office immediately for a free consultation to discuss your options.
Hope A. Lang, Attorney at Law represents workers throughout the entire state, including Hackensack, Jersey City, Newark, Irvington, Orange, East Orange, Trenton, Paterson, Montclair, Elizabeth, North Brunswick, Cherry Hill, Vineland, Union, Plainfield, Hamilton Township, Lakewood, Edison, Parsippany-Troy Hills, Franklin, Lakewood, and every NJ County, including Bergen, Hudson, Middlesex, Essex, Monmouth, Somerset, Ocean, Union, Camden, Passaic, Morris, Gloucester, Atlantic, Burlington, Camden Counties.