Too Old to be Promoted? Interactive Effects of Employee Age and Gender on Career Advancement

Abstract

Integrating Lack of Fit Theory with the Stereotype Content Model to explain workplace age bias, we proposed that supervisors would anticipate older employees being less successful in the future and would, therefore, view them as less promotable. Based on double jeopardy rationales we postulated that these effects would be stronger for female employees. We tested our assumptions with a sample of 116 European supervisor-employee dyads. Results indicated that employee age was negatively related to promotability and that this relationship was mediated by lower anticipated future success of older employees. Employee gender moderated these relationships, but contradictory to our expectations: With increasing age, only male, but not female, employees were rated lower on anticipated future success. A series of theoretical implications are discussed, and we consider whether there may be different prescriptive career timetables for male versus female employees. We also discuss practical implications to minimize age and gender bias in the workplace.