What would Martin Luther King say?

Change and Workpace Discrimination

  •  Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.
  •  He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
  •  Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
  • I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.
  • Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
  • The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
  • When you are right you cannot be too radical …

Who Owns the Problem of Age Discrimination?

Part of the problem of age discrimination in the workplace is that nobody seems to claim ownership of it.

Folks who have already retired are very interested in the issue but it doesn’t affect them directly anymore, except to the extent that it contributes to health issues and poverty in retirement.

Younger workers don’t seem to comprehend that they are the ones who are most directly affected by age discrimination in the workplace. Of course, they are scrambling to survive and raise families in this precarious pro-business economy where workers generally have few rights.  In my new book, Betrayed: The Legalization of Age Discrimination in the Workplace, I show that the problem of age discrimination is so prevalent in America today that it has become the new normal and is even affecting workers in their 30s. To some extent, lack of awareness is in the nature of youth.  As Aristotle said, “Youth is easily deceived, because it is quick to hope.”

The upcoming White House Conference on Aging has not shown any indication that it will address the epidemic of age discrimination in the workplace, a problem made incrementally worse in 2010 when President Barack Obama signed an executive order allowing federal agencies to discriminate against older workers and hire “recent graduates.”  The Conference issues page  identifies the following themes: healthy aging, long term services and supports, and elder justice (abuse and neglect).  Age discrimination  in employment is no-where mentioned.

My book  documents the inferior treatment accorded under the law to victims of age discrimination in employment. I show that the major federal law that prohibits age discrimination, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, was weak and riddled with loopholes when it was passed by Congress in 1967 and has been eviscerated by the U.S. Supreme Court.  Today, there are virtually no consequences for employers who engage in blatant age discrimination and many incentives to do so (e.g., cost-savings, youthful image).

Why have older workers have been second class citizens  under the law for fifty years? The AARP, which earned $1.34 billion last year selling insurance and travel products to older Americans, claims to be a champion of the rights of older Americans.  Is the AARP really so powerless that it cannot insure that older workers at least have the same protections and rights as other Americans?

The most recent major assault on the ADEA occurred in 2009 when the U.S. Supreme Court in Gross v. FBL Financial Services established a higher standard of proof in ADEA cases than exists under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and national origin.  That year, a handful of progressive legislators proposed the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act, which would legislatively “fix” the Gross decision. The POWADA has never made it out of committee.

Contact the White House Conference on Aging and urge conference director Nora Super to address the problem of age discrimination in the workplace. The conference email address is

Age Issue Overlooked in U.S. Supreme Court Debate

The U.S. Supreme Court on January 13 will hear arguments in an important case in which industry groups are seeking to force the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to engage in time-consuming and fruitless  “conciliation” efforts with recalcitrant employers prior to filing a lawsuit against the employer.

One federal appeals court has characterized the so-called “failure to conciliate” defense  – which permits employers to argue that the EEOC didn’t try hard enough to settle a case before filing a lawsuit – a cynical tactic that employers pursue to waste EEOC resources and delay a finding of  liability for employment discrimination.

Interminable delays arguably have the most severe impact  in age discrimination cases because older workers have less time remaining in the workplace (and elsewhere) to achieve justice under the law. I wrote an article this week about two plaintiffs in an age discrimination case who actually died while their cases languished in a Kansas federal court for almost a decade.  Yet, the issue of the devastating impact of delay in age discrimination cases has not been raised in the Mach Mining case.

The U.S. Congress requires the EEOC to conduct conciliation proceedings as a precondition to suing an employer for employment discrimination. In some cases, federal judges have issued one ruling that unilaterally dismisses dozens of substantive claims brought by victims of  egregious discrimination because they deemed the EEOC’s conciliation efforts to be inadequate.

In early 2008, the EEOC received a complaint from a woman  alleging that Mach Mining had denied her employment as a coal miner because of her sex. The EEOC chose to prosecute the case, thereby depriving the woman of the right to file a federal lawsuit on her own behalf. The EEOC presented Mach Mining with a verbal conciliation demand in an effort to resolve the dispute, which Mach Mining rejected. The EEOC then filed a class action lawsuit alleging that Mach Mining  had never hired a woman for a mining position and did not even have a women‘s changing room.  For more details about the issue and the case, see Mach Mining v. EEOC.

For six years, Mach Mining has successfully shifted the focus of the case from its alleged systemic hiring discrimination against women to whether the EEOC engaged in sufficient conciliation efforts prior to filing suit. And that’s the problem with the “failure to conciliate” defense.  At best, it delays justice while the parties squabble over what should be a simple procedural matter.  Did the EEOC make an offer of conciliation?  Did the employer accept or reject the offer?

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently the focus of furious lobbying efforts led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to obtain the Court’s stamp of approval for judicial oversight over the EEOC’s conciliation efforts.  In addition to the Chamber, an amicus brief was filed by the Society for Human Resource Management, the world’s largest human resources membership organization, and  the so-called Equal Employment Advisory Council, a nationwide association of employers that includes over 250 major U.S. corporations; the American Insurance Association; and, the Retail Litigation Center, Inc.

On the other side, an amicus brief supporting he EEOC’s position was filed by the states of Arizona, Hawaii, Illinois and Washington; the  “women’s rights organizations” Equal Rights Advocates of San Francisco and Legal Momentum of New York; and the Impact Fund, a nonprofit foundation based in Berkeley California that focuses on public impact litigation involving civil rights, environmental justice and poverty law. Signing on to the Impact Fund’s amicus brief were the AARP,  the National Employment Lawyers Association; Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus;  Disability Rights California;  and, Public Counsel.

The brief filed by the Impact Fund was general in nature and did not address how the so-called “failure to conciliate” defense affects specific groups like older workers.  Ideally, the AARP, which touts itself as the nation’s premiere advocacy group for Americans over the age of 50, would have followed the example of the women’s groups by filing an independent amicus brief addressing the particularly severe impact of  needless delay in age discrimination cases.

In my recent book, Betrayed: The Legalization of Age Discrimination in the Workplace, I argue that age discrimination  in employment is epidemic in the United States because the Age Discrimination in Employment Act  of 1967 was weak to begin with and has been eviscerated by the U.S. Supreme Court.   Older workers literally are treated like second class citizens under the laws of the United States.  Meanwhile, the EEOC has virtually ignored a record increase in age discrimination complaints brought during and since the Great Recession.

Taxpayers & Older Workers Lose Boeing/Sprint Case

This is Justice?

When a lawsuit ties up taxpayer dollars and federal court resources for almost a decade, it is fair to say that it is a poor reflection on the court system when the case is suddenly dismissed, especially because a judge’s ire is piqued.

Such was the case this week when U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren of Kansas dismissed the claims of 26 plaintiffs in an age discrimination lawsuit filed in 2005 against Boeing Co. and Spirit AeroSystems.

A case that is allowed to linger on a court docket for nine years typically involves a staggering number of filings by both sides, time spent deciding countless issues, endless hours spent in hearings.  This time and expense involves not only the highly-paid federal court  judge but the many minions in the court clerk’s office, court reporters, security guards, facilities fees and God only knows what and who else.

And it is almost never in the plaintiffs’ interest to delay; it is always the interests of the defendants, in this case two major corporations that employ armies of defense counsel for the sole purpose of avoiding liability in civil lawsuits.

How can a judge possibly justify an extreme action like dismissing the  claims  of the 26 plaintiffs with prejudice – which means the plaintiffs cannot refile the case – after all this time?  Don’t U.S. taxpayers deserve better than this? The federal court system is asking the U.S. Congress to approve a budget of $6.735 billion in taxpayer money in 2015.

When Boeing sold its commercial aircraft operations in Wichita to the parent company of Spirit AeroSystems in 2005, 90 former Boeing workers claimed they lost their jobs because of their age.

The lawsuit was initially filed as a class action in December 2005, with Melgren granting summary judgment in the companies’ favor on the class-action claims in 2010. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling in 2012. The following year, an amended complaint was filed on behalf of 87 workers alleging individual counts of age discrimination. It was whittled down to 26 plaintiffs as some former workers settled out of court, some were dismissed by the court as “inactive,” dropped out or died.  Yes, died.

 It is entirely foreseeable that plaintiffs will die in an age discrimination case that is allowed to linger for almost a decade. There is an old axiom that is particularly true in age discrimination cases – Justice delayed is justice denied.

Melgren, an appointee of former President George Bush in 2008, in a scathing decision,  said he was dismissing the remaining claims as a sanction for the plaintiffs supposed refusal to obey a court order to give their tax returns to the Boeing and Sprint.

You might ask yourself why the plaintiffs tax returns are even an issue in this case? How does this relate to whether they lost their jobs in 2005 because of age discrimination?  Besides, Plaintiffs’ Attorney James Gore said the plaintiffs’ signed authorizations for the release of their tax return information, which should have been enough to comply with the court order.

The judge also chided Gore for choosing “not to even attend” a hearing on the companies’ request to summarily rule in their favor. “This inaction exemplifies a pattern of nonparticipation that leads the Court to find that a lesser sanction would not deter further noncompliance,” Melgren wrote.

Gore told the Associated Press that he notified the court that he wouldn’t be able to attend weeks prior to the hearing and on the day of the hearing. He said he was dealing with the death of the grandmother who had raised him. He said the other plaintiffs’ attorney on the case, Lawrence Williamson, was suffering from an ongoing, debilitating illness that kept him from traveling.  He said he will appeal Melgren’s decision and ask Melgren to reconsider.

Imagine the demands on plaintiffs’ counsel when a court permits an army of defense counsel employed by major corporations to delay, delay, delay …  How can anyone consider this to be justice?

The decision came in the case of Apsley et al v. Boeing Company, Civil Case No. 05-1368.Gore said he planned to appeal the decision to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals and would also ask the judge to reconsider.  Boeing/Sprint promises to fight any appeal. And so it goes.

“Substantial” Evidence in Age Discrimination Cases

gavelThose few age discrimination victims who manage to prevail in lawsuits against their employers may find their victory is elusive.

 Such was the case in California recently when a Superior Court judge voided a jury’s decision to award 15 San Francisco firefighters $3.7 million in damages on the grounds of age discrimination in a city promotional exam. In a 9-3 verdict in 2013, the jury found the test was skewed against firefighters who were over the age of 40.

Judge Anne-Christine Massullo effectively snatched victory from the firefighters and gave it to the city.

The firefighters had accused the city of arbitrarily altering dozens of scores on the 2008 test and shredding documents before the firefighters had a chance to file a legal challenge. Judge Massullo questioned the city’s decision to destroy the documents but said this was minor error and that the test was “overwhelmingly successful” in measuring the firefighters’ job-related skills in a “fair and objective” way.

In my book, Betrayed: The Legalization of Age Discrimination in the Workplace, I point to research showing  that employment discrimination cases are disproportionately dismissed on pre-trial or post-trial motions. A 2006 study found that federal judges grant employer motions to dismiss in employment discrimination cases 73 percent of the time, compared to a dismissal rate of about 53 percent in antitrust, patent and trademark cases. Employers also are disproportionately successful in reversing employee’s victories on appeal.

 Judicial override  of a jury verdict should be an absolute last resort because it is inherently a vote of “no confidence” in America’s civil justice system. Moreover, it is an appalling waste of resources when taxpayer money is spent empanelling juries and holding expensive trials only to have a judge say that he/she knows better.

Judge Massullo decided that no “substantial” evidence existed to support the jury’s verdict but what does this really mean? The U.S. Supreme Court has said that juries are uniquely qualified to decide cases that rest on determinations about conflicting evidence and the credibility of witnesses. It should be presumed that juries are more qualified than judges to decide the quantum of  “substantial”  evidence necessary to warrant a finding of age discrimination.

Appeals Court Puts Judge on Hot Seat in Trucking Case

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit has rejected an order requiring the EEOC to pay $4.7 million in attorney fees and costs  to CRST Van Expedited, Inc., one of the nation’s leading transport companies, in an egregious sexual harassment case involving female truck driver trainees.

This lawsuit, perhaps more than any other in recent history, demonstrates the extent to which federal courts have moved away from the worthy goal of addressing serious employment discrimination to engaging in pro-business partisanship, sweeping generalizations and moronic procedural disputes.  It also raises questions about whether the EEOC, in the current environment, can actually carry out its goal of promoting  more strategic use of agency resources by emphasizing high stakes litigation involving multiple victims.

At various points, Chief Judge Linda R. Reade of the U.S. District Court of Iowa dismissed all of the 154 plaintiffs in the EEOC case and  ruled the agency  must pay CRST, one of the nation’s leading transport company, a whopping $4.7 million in attorneys’ fees and costs.

The 8th Circuit’s ruling constitutes a step in the right direction. The appeals court remanded the case back to the district court with instructions to reassess the attorney’s fee award. Among other things, the appeals court is asking Reade to explain why she dismissed dozens of sexual harassment claims as frivolous, unreasonable or ungrounded.  Moreover, the Court rejected Reade’s award of attorney fees with respect to 67 claimants whom Reade dismissed from the case under a controversial ‘failure to conciliate” theory.

Several federal circuits have ruled the EEOC must engage in individual conciliation or negotiations with an employer with respect to each and every claim in a class action lawsuit, even if the employer has indicated no willingness to settle.  This requirement allows guilty employers to delay adjudicting the issue of discrimination, constitutes a colossal waste of  EEOC resources, and ultimately severely limits the agency’s ability to file class action employment discrimination lawsuits.

Reade dismissed  67 potential class members from the CRST lawsuit on the grounds that the EEOC failed to engage in  “bona fide” conciliation efforts with CRST. She did not even consider the merits of the plaintiff’s claims, some of which involved shocking allegations of sexual harassment and abuse lodged by female truck driver trainees who were stranded in isolated conditions on the road.  These women alleged that CRST did little or nothing in response to their complaints.

The 8th Circuit ruled that the EEOC’s duty to conciliate does not constitute an element of a claim. Therefore, the appeals court said , the EEOC didn’t lose those 67 claims and the CRST was not a prevailing party with respect to those claims.  The appeals court concluded that CRST is not entitled to an award of attorneys’ fees for the claims dismissed under the “failure to conciliate” theory.

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CT Dismisses Case of Potentially Fatal Work Schedule

A federal appeals court in Maine has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by a department store clerk with type 1 diabetes who quit because she feared her erratic work schedule could actually kill her.

This is yet another example of how difficult it is for disabled employees to prevail in a lawsuit filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Kohl’s Department Store adopted a new schedule in 2010 that required Pamela Manning to work so-called swing shifts where a night shift is followed by an early shift the next day. Manning told Kohl’s the erratic schedule was endangering her health.  At Kohl’s request, Manning submitted a letter from her endocrinologist stating that Manning’s health was suffering and she needed a predictable day shift to better manage the disease.

When Kohl’s refused Manning’s request for a steady and fixed shift, Manning walked away from the full-time job that she had held for approximately four years.  The U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against Kohl’s for violating its duty under the Americans with Disabilities Act for failing to provide Manning with reasonable accommodations so she could continue to work

In a split decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Maine acknowledged Kohl’s refusal to provide Manning with a set shift but said it could not “ignore” the fact that Kohl’s had offered to discuss “alternative reasonable accommodations.”  The court notes that its record is devoid of any “facts” regarding other accommodation Kohl’s was prepared to offer but blames this on the EEOC for telling Manning not to continue discussions with Kohl’s.

The EEOC claimed that Kohl’s effort consisted of disingenuous “empty gestures”  and the dissent accused Kohl’s of engaging in a “negotiating tactic that is unfair to disabled employees who reasonably believe that they confront imminent serious harm if an accommodation is not provided.”

In a meeting with store officials, Manning offered to work a set day or mid-day shift, even on weekends.  After Kohl’s rejected her offer, Manning told them she had no choice but to quit because she would go into ketoacidosis or a coma if she continued working unpredictable hours.  As Manning was cleaning out her locker, a store official asked her to consider undefined alternative accommodations. Ten days later, a store official telephoned Manning and suggested she consider alternative accommodations for part-time and full-time work. However, the official said she would have consult with Kohl’s corporate office about any specifics.  Kohl’s terminated Manning’s employment a week later

The majority said Kohl’s had made an “earnest attempt” to discuss other potential accommodations with Manning and that  Manning had failed her duty to engage in good faith discussions with Kohl’s.

Continue reading “CT Dismisses Case of Potentially Fatal Work Schedule”

Author pgbarnesPosted on Categories DISPATCHES, FEDERALTags Americans With Disability Act, disability, Kohl'sLeave a comment on CT Dismisses Case of Potentially Fatal Work Schedule

U.S. Sleeps While U.K. Tackles Age Discrim.

While the U.S. ignores the problem, the United Kingdom Monday announced a “world-leading new approach” to tackle age discrimination in employment there.

UK Employment Minister Esther McVey said the program will battle long-term unemployment among over-50 job seekers by providing them with training in resume and interview skills, the internet and social media. In addition, she said experts would provide older workers with “career reviews” to identify skills from previous jobs and  training needs.

The program will initially hire seven “older worker champions” across the UK who will focus on “going out to smaller and medium-sized businesses to ensure they recognise the benefits of hiring older workers” by challenging outdated stereotypes about older workers.

Long-term unemployment  in the UK fell by 16 percent overall in the past year – but joblessness among workers over the age of 50 fell by only 3.5 percent.   Almost  half (47 percent) of all unemployed people between 50 and 64 in the UK have been out of work for a year or more – this compares with 33 percent for those aged 18 to 24.

“The plight of unemployed older workers has gone under the radar for too long. There’s something fundamentally wrong with so many skilled and experienced people finding themselves locked out of the workplace simply because of their age,” McVey told BBC Radio 5 live.

In my book, Betrayed: The Legalization of Age Discrimination in the Workplace, I show that older workers in the United States  face blatant and unaddressed age discrimination in hiring but no one seems to care. The problem is hidden here behind terms like “long term unemployment” and “early writing.”

I show that the U.S. government has not only failed to address the problem but actually made it incrementally worse in 2010 when President Barack Obama signed an executive order permitting federal agencies to bypass older workers and hire “recent graduates.” Meanwhile,  the U.S. Congress has failed for five years to pass the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act, which would make it slightly easier for plaintiffs to win age discrimination lawsuits.

Epidemic age discrimination in the United States has devastating consequences for older workers, who are forced to spend down their savings until they age into a  financially insecure retirement where they suffer a 25 percent cut in Social Security benefits for the rest of their lives.

There are many facets to the problem of age discrimination in employment in the United States, not the least of which is that the problem seems to be invisible to federal policy makers.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 was weak and riddled with loopholes to begin with and has been eviscerated by the U.S. Supreme Court.  Older workers today are literally second-class citizens under U.S. law, with far less protection than individuals who are discriminated against on the basis of race, sex and religion.

And no American group has emerged to effectively advocate for older workers.

The White House is planning a conference on aging in 2015. In recent months, I have made repeated efforts to contact the executive director of the conference, Nora Super, to urge her to address the problem of age discrimination in employment. I even sent her a copy of my book.  I’ve received absolutely no response.

Ford Co. Report Fuels Ageism Trend

What does it mean to make way for Generation Z?

The slogan, “Make Way for Gen Z,” is the “featured” trend in a new report by Ford Motor Company called Ford 15 that  supposedly predicts micro-trends that are expected to influence products and brands for 2015 and beyond.

It is sad but not surprising that Ford’s prognosticators chose to  slant the company report  in a negative and arguably ageist way rather than by using a positive concept like  “Welcome Gen. Z!”

Ford doesn’t really explain who is supposed to make way for Gen Z but it appears obvious that everyone who was born before the mid or late 1990s should be preparing to move to the back of the bus.  It is a common marketing ploy for a business to distinguish a product on the basis of age. Youth is characterized as cool and desirable while age is the opposite. General Motors once  had an advertising slogan called, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile”

Ford is trying to appear trendy, forward-thinking and to cultivate a youth market by distancing itself from the aging millennial and baby boom generations. Ford celebrates Gen Z as the “first truly global generation, born into an on-demand, technology-driven culture.”   Common negative stereotypes about older people are that they are rigid and slow to change, not global and, especially, that they are not technologically driven.

In my new book, Betrayed: The Legalization of Age Discrimination in the Workplace, I argue that age discrimination in employment is epidemic in America and is fueled by outdated ageist stereotypes and subconscious fears about age-related decline and death.  Ageism is so prevalent that it is trickling down to workers who were once considered young.  Ford is signaling to millennials  that they are no longer young.   Millennials reached adulthood around the year 2000.  That would put them in their 30s today!

I suggest that one of the trends that Ford missed  is the very real and  destructive  trend of ageism in consumer marketing. This trend contributes to ignorance and irrational fear of aging. It pits generations against each other. And for what purpose? To sell cars?

There seems to be an underlying concern in America that the pie is not big enough to be split in an equitable manner – that one generation is robbing another. But this in a country when 16,000 families in America possess $6 trillion in assets – equal to the total wealth of the bottom two-thirds of al American families. The problem is not the pie; it’s the inequitable distribution.

Older Women: Goodbye Retirement

The Labor Force Participation Rate for Americans over the age of 65 – particularly women – has literally skyrocketed in recent years.

An analysis by Investing.com shows that since January 2000, the rate of participation in the workforce for Americans aged 65 and over soared by 50 percent, including a whopping 67 percent increase for women!

The report, “Structural Trends in Employment by Age Group,” was written by Doug Short, Vice-President of Research for Advisor Perspectives. He specializes in the analysis of long-term trends in economic and market data.

Short  said the “vision of the good life in retirement” that was undergirded by Social Security and Medicare became a “standard expectation” for pre-Boomer generations . He said the reality today is that “an increasing number of Americans aged 65 and over are delaying retirement, and many who did retire have now reentered the workforce.”  Short states the recession, including “two savage market selloffs,”  is driving  the trend.

Age Discrimination

In my new book, Betrayed: The Legalization of Age Discrimination in the Workplace, I show that age discrimination has a direct relationship to poverty in retirement. Older workers often are forced out of their jobs and cannot find new jobs because of overwhelming and blatant age discrimination in hiring. Many are forced to work in low-wage jobs or to  spend down their savings until they can age into early “retirement,” which results in a 25 percent (or more) cut in Social Security benefits for the rest of their lives.

But nobody seems to care.

I note the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 was weak and riddled with loopholes to begin with and has been further eviscerated by the U.S. Supreme Court.  Meanwhile, I show that  the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has virtually ignored a tsunami of age discrimination complaints, President Obama signed an executive order in 2010 that permits the federal government to discriminate against older workers and the U.S. Congress has failed for five years to  pass the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act, which would make it slightly easier (not much) for older workers to successfully sue for age discrimination. Lastly, the organization that many Americans look to for advocacy for older workers, the AARP Foundation, seems more interested in fund-raising than actually advocating for older workers.

Older Women Suffer

According to Money Magazine, women are almost twice as likely as men to live below the poverty line during retirement, with single and minority women struggling the most (see chart).

Life below the poverty line (Source: GAO analysis of Census data for 2012)

Population Male Poverty rate  Female poverty rate
All 65 and older  6.6% 11%
Married 4.7% 4.9%
Widowed 10.1% 14.5%
Divorced 12.2% 17.1%
Separated 10.8% 35.4%
Never married 15.7% 23.2%
White 4.6% 8.6%
Black 13.2% 21.3%
Asian 11.6% 11.9%
Hispanic 19.1% 21.8%
On average, women 65 years and older rely on a median income of around $16,000 a year — roughly $11,000 less than men of the same age, according to a Congressional analysis of Census data. And many older women rely exclusively on Social Security benefits. The reason that older women are plunged into poverty in their old age seems obvious. Women earn less during their lifetime and consequently save less and women  live longer. And, of course, older women suffer from outrageous age discrimination in employment.