Following on the heels of Virginia’s post from yesterday, I just saw this Reuters article (“Job Losses Hitting Men Harder Than Women”) about how the economic crisis is hitting men much harder than women in the workplace, largely because male-dominated industries like construction and transportation are bearing the brunt of job losses, figures show.
Women, meanwhile, dominate sectors that are still growing, like government and healthcare.
But I have to ask: Are articles like these minimizing the recession’s effects on women? What about the hard times for women seeking to re-enter the workforce because hubby just got laid off?  When calculating unemployment, do you count the number of jobs lost or jobs unfound? I’m not an economist and I’m SO not into playing the recession oppression Olympics here, believe me, but Linda Hirshman had an interesting take on it all in Slate the other week and I just wanted to share.
Comments
Virginia — January 28, 2009
Yeah, it is all important--the patterns of job loss in a crisis and the patterns of discrimination too. As this crisis goes on, I'll be interested in hearing from Deborah and others even more about how job loss influences "masculinity" and "femininity." One of my excellent students draws my attention to the 1930s movies of Joan Crawford to see think about how we were all doing at a time when men were (massively) losing ground.
Virginia — January 28, 2009
Oh one more thing: Dean Baker at Center for Economic and Policy Research wrote in the Guardian on Monday about "How Shorter Work Weeks / Work Years Can Be Stimulus." Read it, and everything else Dean Baker writes. Link: http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/time-for-jobs/