Fixed retirement may not fix diversity issues

If John Goodenough had not left Oxford University in 1986, he would have had to retire when he turned 65. Instead, he moved to the University of Texas at Austin, where 33 years later he continues to perform groundbreaking science at the age of 97.

Compulsory retirement ages have since been abolished in many countries, and the UK abolished its default retirement age in 2011. However, employers can still force people to retire at a certain age if this is ‘a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’. Oxford has used this rule to continue to impose mandatory retirement on its academics, who now have to retire by the September preceding their 69th birthday. How do they justify this step?