Great Recession harder on men?
Natalee Roan
August 18th, 2009In this article, Time declares that this recession is going much easier on women, mainly because it has hit male-dominated industries like construction and manufacturing. I'll add banking to this list. In contrast, women dominate healthcare, education and government, the sectors least hit (thus far). At one point this winter, 4 men were getting laid off for every woman. The article fails to mention that women are sometimes retained because their labor cost is still ultimately lower than that of their male counterparts. Finally, an advantage to being paid $0.76 on the dollar.
Great response.
Thanks for a detailed, thoughtful response Dave - Really appreciate it.
RE: Great Recession harder on men?
The TIME article touches on the idea that the issue isn't cut and dry. Few gender roles issues are.
If one looks at unemployment statistics (http://www.bls.gov/data/#unemployment), there are clearly some interaction effects across gender, education, ethnicity, and urban/metro/rural geography.
By only looking across the provided tables and having some knowledge of the sociology of work, one can start to build a hypothesis that people hardest hit by the recession are the same people that are usually hardest hit: less educated, less skilled, interurban minority families with traditional gender roles in which women are raising children and men are bread-winners.
The statistics speak to socio-economic class more than gender.
When discussing the impact of the recession on a personal level, I think it makes the most sense to talk about families. Not nuclear families, but the extended social networks that prop each of us up.
In that personal network, I think everyone who values family is impacted equitably.
I guess I'm really challenging the assumption that the impact of the recession should be measured fiscally. I believe that there is a much larger psychological toll that erodes the security of our previous cultural beliefs about work and income and stability, and I believe that damage transcends gender differences.
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