Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Gendered Ageism and Organizational Routines at Work: The Case of Day-Parting in Television Broadcasting

Spedale Latimer, Simona; Coupland, Christine; Tempest, Sue

Authors

Simona Spedale Latimer

Christine Coupland

Profile Image

SUE TEMPEST SUE.TEMPEST@NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK
Professor of Strategic Management and Learning



Abstract

This article contributes to the study of gendered ageism in the workplace by investigating how the routine of day-parting in broadcasting participates in the social construction of an ideology of ‘youthfulness’ that contributes to inequality. Critical discourse analysis is applied to the final judgment of an Employment Tribunal court case where the British public service broadcaster, the BBC, faced accusations of discrimination on the basis of both age and gender. Three interrelated findings are highlighted. First, the ideology of youthfulness was constituted through discursive strategies of nomination and predication that relied on an inherently ageist and sexist lexical register of ‘brand refreshment and rejuvenation’. Second, the ideology of youthfulness was reproduced through a pervasive discursive strategy of combined de-agentialization, abstraction and generalization that maintained power inequality in the workplace by obscuring the agency of the more powerful organizational actors while further marginalizing the weaker ones. Third, despite evidence that the intersection of age and gender produced qualitatively different experiences for individual organizational actors, in the legitimate and authoritative version of the truth constructed in the Tribunal’s final judgment, ageism discursively prevailed over sexism as a form of oppression at work. These findings support the view that the intersection of age and gender in the workplace should be explored by taking into account different levels of analysis – individual, organizational and societal – and with sensitivity to the context. They also suggest that the notion of gendered ageism is still poorly articulated and that the lack of an appropriate vocabulary encourages the discursive dominance of ageism over sexism, making the intersection of the two more difficult to study and to address.

Citation

Spedale Latimer, S., Coupland, C., & Tempest, S. (2014). Gendered Ageism and Organizational Routines at Work: The Case of Day-Parting in Television Broadcasting. Organization Studies, 35(11), 1585-1604. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840614550733

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 24, 2014
Online Publication Date Nov 4, 2014
Publication Date Nov 4, 2014
Deposit Date May 21, 2018
Journal Organization Studies
Print ISSN 0170-8406
Electronic ISSN 1741-3044
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 35
Issue 11
Pages 1585-1604
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840614550733
Keywords critical discourse analysis, gendered ageism, intersectionality, legitimacy, organizational routines
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1097711
Publisher URL https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0170840614550733