The Pew Research Center put together an interesting report on how the recession and subsequent "recovery" has affected men and women disproportionately. You probably heard all of the media crying about how this was a mancession or some such BS that made it sound like it was women's fault for men losing jobs at the early part of the recesssion.
The story you won't be hearing is that men have been recovering quickly since the end of the recession while women's employment is staying flat or dropping. If men took the brunt of job losses early on maybe it's to be expected they'd be picking up faster. But the report goes into talking about how layoffs in state employment might be contributing overwhelmingly to the loss of jobs for women. And while we hope construction and manufacturing will recover in this country it seems like state employees are the new favorite punching bag of free market junkies. So I wonder if this recession will be more permanently painful to women than it was to men. And probably an ignored storyline.
Normally, I'd agree with you on this (and I do partly that women are having a tougher time in the "post-recession" job hunt).
ReplyDeleteBut since the start of the recession, men have lost ~4.6M jobs and women have lost 1.9M jobs. That's still over a 2:1 margin that has disproportionately affected men. Where's the anti-women bias in that?
I'm all for advocating equal rights for everyone. But your evidence you present clearly shows the recession has affected more men than women. In time, indeed, it might be more painful for women but I don't actually think 2.7M women are going to lose their jobs and men with increase. If/When we have a double dip recession, men are still going to re-lose their jobs just as fast as women.
I'm not arguing men weren't hit hard. But if men's jobs recover while women's don't, what then? We are seeing slow recovery in manufacturing and housing but teachers and state employees are being permanently laid off. I'm not saying the numbers don't make it look tough for men just wondering what the long term consequences for women will be.
ReplyDeleteI believe more men have accepted the job which were available rather than searching for their dream or desired job.
ReplyDeleteVery true Frau. In due time, if men are getting a disproportionate amount of jobs than what they lost, that's a huge problem. I don't think that will be the case, rather it's a lag in the system.
ReplyDeleteMore men work in construction, engineering, and R&D jobs which are the first to go. Teachers and health care workers (dominated by women), generally have better unions so they don't shed jobs quite as quickly until they have a few rounds of negotiations.
Recessions usually hit men harder than they hit women. Nothing new there. The story usually told is that either the single income man looses his job, and both spouses go in search of a new job, and the woman gets a job because for any given position where a man and a woman are both applying, the woman is cheaper to hire. And during recoveries, women tend to to better as well, presumably for similar reasons. The question of why not this time would be an interesting one to look into. Thanks for writing about this.
ReplyDeleteProfessionally I can tell you that when what I study hits white men, I get a lot more media calls about it than when it affects other groups. Even when it is affecting everybody if one media outlet just writes about how it is affecting white men, all of a sudden all the other outlets are like, OMG what you're researching is so important. *sigh* I blame the patriarchy.
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