Midlife gender discrimination and later-life cognition: results from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States

ObjectiveDiscrimination of various types is associated with social stress, which in turn is implicated in later-life cognitive decline. However, women who have higher socioeconomic status and who are younger are more likely to perceive gender discrimination. This leaves unclear whether gender discrimination bears independent, detrimental links to later-life cognition.MethodsWe implement longitudinal regression analyses of the 1995–2015 National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (baseline ages 25–74) that consider follow-up cognitive performance as it relates to midlife gender discrimination.ResultsContrary to a social stress perspective, we find positive associations between women’s midlife experiences of gender discrimination and cognitive performance at 10- and 20-year follow-up. These consistent, robust associations are mostly accounted for by differences in age and socioeconomic status, consistent with tokenism in the workplace and changing consciousness and experiences of discrimination across generations. They remain intact after probability-based adjustments for survey attrition and across analyses of discrimination subscores.DiscussionFollowing our results, we propose that future research on gender discrimination should pay closer attention to positionalities that intersect gender with age and other social statuses. Meanwhile, we urge greater research attention to other aspects of structural sexism at the cultural, organizational, or internalized levels that are still likely to be harmful for women’s cognitive health in some capacity. We also encourage further attention to intersectional discrimination involving ethno-racial statuses in particular.