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Economic Recovery? Not So Much for Women
The latest employment figures place the economic "recovery" firmly on the Y chromosome. According to the National Women's Law Center, the unemployment crisis declined for men in 2010-but grew for women.
From January to December 2010, federal data shows that unemployment among women ticked up from 7.8 percent to 8.1 percent, while the rate for men dipped from 10 percent to 9.4 percent. All those figures are, of course, pretty dismal, and overall unemployment during the recession has been proportionally higher for men.
Still, the divergent employment trends in 2010 indicate that the recovery period will fail to address or even widen gender gaps in economic opportunity. The recovery certainly looks different from the bottom end, as the NWLC reports:
Of the 1.11 million jobs added to the economy between January and December 2010, only 120,000-just 10.8 percent-went to women.
The gaps are even wider when you parse the statistics by race and gender:
- The 12.3 percent average annual unemployment rate for single mothers in 2010 is the highest average annual rate for this group since data have been recorded.
- The average annual unemployment rates in 2010 for African American women (12.8 percent), African American men (17.3 percent), Hispanic women (11.4 percent),and Hispanic men (11.7 percent) represent the highest average annual rates for each of these groups in at least 25 years.
- Average unemployment for these vulnerable groups was even higher than the 9.8 percent annual average unemployment rate for men overall, which also represents an historic high.
After enduring the Great Recession, why do women get stuck with such a Tiny Recovery? The answer could lie in a delayed reaction in certain segments of the economy. The NWLC suspects that the anemic employment gains for women is tied to
the heavy job losses in the public sector, where women represent 57 percent of the labor force but lost a disproportionate 86 percent of the 220,000 jobs lost during 2010.
So it seems 2010 was when women began feeling the full onslaught of attacks on the public sector by politicians and the media-the bashing of teacher unions, the insistence among state officials that the budgets must be balanced on the backs of underpaid civil servants. And the data reveals that although women are overrepresented in the public sector, they suffer an even more disproportionate rate of job loss. Those losses could worsen as budget cuts kick in and federal stimulus funds, which had been used to prop up government jobs, finally evaporate.
Another aspect of women's job insecurity may be lower rates of unionization. The rate among employed women is 12.7 percent, according to federal data, compared to 14.4 percent for men. Unionization declines further down the age scale, too, so young women, with less work experience, could be in an even more precarious position.
At this pace, women and people of color won't be able to "bounce back" any time soon. To deal with the chronic economic malaise behind the immediate crisis, disadvantaged and marginalized workers need more than recovery to get them to where they deserve to be: They need justice.
22 Comments so far
Show AllAlthough I am as concerned about high unemployment as the author, the statistics the author cites disputes her thesis that women are worse off than men with respect to unemployment.
The figures the US Government uses are full of bull It's much worse than that for all. We all need to get a better deal except for the billionaires. They are doing mighty fine, but then they own the politicians, the judges, and other public officials with a few exceptions. But hell they're "working' on that.-- not "to worry." This is the 1930s and getting worse all the time. The old "Prosperity is around the corner" line is right out of the 1930s and just about as "accurate."
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This article is the first I've ever read that said women are doing worse than men in this recession. I've always heard just the opposite wast true, as this Reuters article indicates.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0214300820100302
This article shows that women are doing worse in the recovery.
No, it certainly does not. From the article itself: "From January to December 2010, federal data shows that unemployment among women ticked up from 7.8 percent to 8.1 percent, while the rate for men dipped from 10 percent to 9.4 percent."
This article shows that women's unemployment became higher than it was in the last few months, but is still significantly lower than men's. We have had over two years of unemployment figures showing that it is worse for men than women in every single quarter, including this one.
And this does not even count the fact that people unemployed over 6 months are not even being counted.
There are many millions more unemployed men than women right now in the US.
Vorpalmusic, you must be a sexist misogynist reactionary :) because you dare to call into question the status of American Women as the most victimized on every front.
Never mind that more men are unemployed.
Never mind that more men lack health insurance.
Never mind the anti-male inequities of the family court sytems in the US.
Never mind the truth.
Just shut up and get with the feminist program and then you can call yourself a truly enlightened progressive.
"dreamjoehill"
The deeper feminist philosophy is more profound than you think. It is not anti-man, anymore than MLK's philosophy was anti-white. There is a contribution that feminism has to offer to the whole human race. If a philosophy only seeks to benefit a single group of individuals at the exclusion of others, then it is hoax. But if its aim is to improve the whole of humanity, one should perhaps give it some consideration.
MLK's message didn't stop with anti-segregation or the passage of the civil rights law. He continued to speak out on poverty, materialism and militarism, and helped us to make a connection between our unquestioned value system to our current societal problems.
I think when philosophies move from their pure theoretical forms towards their manifestations in practical politics, they often run into a bit of trouble. Perhaps. Ms.Chen is promoting an agenda, but aren't we all? What is clear is that the system is extremely unfair and oppressive. It should be question at every turn. Those who are oppressed have more common cause with one another than those who are trying to maintain the status quo.
Let us all (women and men) unite and vow never to take up the role of the oppressor again.
I have a problem with feminist thought that doesn't acknowledge the overwhelming primacy of class in America. I also have a problem with feminist family law and policies that have both strengthened the police state and criminalzed working class men.
The class divide is deeper and more pervasive tahnany of the other seperartions in our society.
"Let us all (women and men) unite and vow never to take up the role of the oppressor again."
Yeah but first I've got to get this goddamn bit out from between my teeth and go take care of the guy that likes to whip the horses.
Peace!
Has Chen adopted the divide and conquer, blame the victims strategy that the Democratic and Republican Parties perfected ?
Does anyone here know what the purpose of this article is supposed to be? Ms. Chen uses figures that says women are lagging behind in the "recovery". Of course, as every blue collar worker knows there is no recovery. She cites data to say that women are not gaining jobs as quickly as men while at the same time acknowledges that men lost jobs these past two years in higher numbers. Simple logic would suggest that the group who lost the most would also see the most gains in employment just due to sheer numbers.
The only thing I can think of as far as the reason for this article is that Ms. Chen is pushing some other agenda other than the dismal state of the economy and justice for workers.
What much of the data doesn't show, but is available if one bothers to look, is that many of the public sector jobs that were lost are those that are not directly tied to "public safety" such as police officer or firefighter, an area that historically has been male dominated due to nothing other than physical strength. Data also shows that the unemployment rate for men has been held down as low as it has been because many young men continue to join the military as a means of escape - they've essentially become cannon fodder in our two ongoing wars of occupation.
Something else that Ms. Chen hasn't brought up that we all know is that in many cases those who had lost their jobs and now have found employment have seen their real wages significantly lowered. We have traded good, living wage jobs for barely sustenance level wages. A problem for both sexes, but one felt more among men - again, just because of the sheer numbers involved.
If we are to talk about justice for workers, then we need to start discussing the entire social and economic structure that holds down ALL workers. We also need to realize that in many of our large urban centers, areas that are predominately minority have unacceptably high unemployment rates due to a whole host of issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with race or gender. Here its the same old story, the poor are kept poor due to a lack of investment - crumbling and underfunded schools, lack of affordable nutritious food stores, underfunded or non existent public transportation, high rates of crime that occur wherever there are easily exploitable people.
About the only thing this article says that comes close to explaining this disparity - and its fast becoming not a disparity but one of equal suffering - is the extreme low rates of unionization among workers. I can't begin to count the number of people I know who disparage unions and the entire idea of unionization. Not management - which I can see having that mentality - but average working people. The only thing I know that explains this is the fact that people who are in their thirties - the prime working years - have been fed this line since birth having been born after Ronald Regan's and the media's great assault on the unions.
Seems articles like this keep all of us fighting over scraps like some pack of wild animals instead of working together to build a just and equitable world.
Your points are certainly well taken. Still, the point of the article was not to obscure or promote divisiveness, but rather to highlight the fact that certain segments of society are hit in unique ways by the recession, particularly in terms of gender and race (some of that might be forgotten for the reasons that you mention about male-dominated professions being so heavily impacted). Shouldn't this be seen as information that must be incorporated and integrated into an inclusive agenda of building a more equitable world? There are ways of talking about difference that help broaden viewpoints rather than promote fighting over the scraps, which is arguably what politicians do when they turn private and public sector, union and non-union, immigrant and native-born workers against each other. Hopefully acknowledgment of disparities can exist alongside solidarity.
"Hopefully acknowledgment of disparities can exist alongside solidarity."
Yes, it probably could in a completely rational world. You're making a career of singling out identity groups at the expense of solidarity simply by implying privilege on the part of others who suffer.
I admit I'm one of your biggest detractors on here. But, to me, all of your pieces highlight the differences between mutually suffering groups instead of their commonalities which strikes me as antithetical to the very idea of solidarity, especially if *every* piece seems to focus on a subset group of a larger population that you identify with. That's no crime, obviously, and I totally get the idea of giving voice both to groups you personally identify with--I'm assuming in your case tht would be women and people of color--as well as the perception that women and people of color are disproprtionately unrepresented on social issues (a claim that, if you did make, I think would be profoundly untrue).
But if your goal is to help a broader movement on economic and social justice, it seems to me that it would be a better use of time to tie different identities together in common cause instead of appearing to focus only on who in your view is suffering just a bit worse. You can highlight the relative differences between subgroups in that context, but for some reason, that just never comes out in your work, especially your stuff on immigration, which reads like press release from corporate contributors to diversity campaigns.
Heck, I'm a middle aged white guy who will probably never work a "normal" job again, but I'll be the firt to admit that the biggest economic justice urgency is probably what is going on with young black men in the US who are probably taking more grief than any other population of the screwed, even the migras and every other category of marginalized and excluded.
Help us not enter that downward spiral of getting into the age-old battle of who has the worse war wounds. Everyone's hurting, and everyone needs help.
Your reading of this and other pieces on this site is clearly shaped by your personal experience, and I won't try to deny you that voice by quibbling about editorial tone. But I'd argue that what some dismiss as "identity politics" comes from the same critical perspective, but for many reasons, provokes varying degrees of reaction/alienation. Does building solidarity mean erasing the element of self-identification? And how do we parse the influence of the personal from the "objective"? It's a bit frustrating to think that an argument that might otherwise be dismissed as divisive identity politics has more valence when preceded by a disclaimer that reads, "I'm a middle-aged white guy, but I sympathize with those people..." That's a certain kind of narrative "privilege" to which not everyone is entitled, though I don't think it makes that argument necessarily any less true. Then there's the more fundamental question of: is this useful information, does it provide insight into a group or community that you previously overlooked, did it make you analyze things from a perspective you hadn't before, even if it is critical? And it seems that, despite the misgivings, articles like this make you do that. Thanks.
Ms Chen,
The problems facing American working class men are extremely under-investigated and underreported, almost invisible.
In this article, as well as in the one you wrote about health insurance a few months ago, the headlines and tones of the articles misrepresent the truth by making it appear that more women are uninsured, and that unemployment is hurting women more than men, although regarding the latter article, at least the statistics showing much higher male unemployment are referred to in the body ogf the article.
I find it revealing that their is so little attention paid to this insurance gap and this unemployment gap. It strikes me that this lack of attention is based on a rigourously enforced anti-male bias that is very prevelant on the left and, indeed, throughout society.
Why does CD keep posting from this author?
She obviously doesn't have a clue.
Males, black males especially, have been on a marked economic downturn in almost every category for at least a decade. CEO representation is the only exception.
thanks for mentioning this, js. I did above, but posted a response before I read the last of the original entries...:) I agree, there is a war on black men that pretty much trumps every other group in terms of sheer devastation.
I think some of the confusion about this article is that women were not hit as hard by the economic collapse as men. They didn't loose as many jobs because women didn't work in manufacturing as much. Instead they did more low paying service jobs and teaching and nursing didn't get hurt as bad as manufacturing.
Women started with lower unemployment but now that the recovery is slowly slowly recovering, they are not getting the new jobs because they are lacking in experience and education. The first to be re-hired will be the best qualified.
The future of women is starting to look up however because a higher percentage of women are graduating from college than men. That should eventually translate into their being more qualified than men, so sometime in the future they should crash through that glass ceiling and take over in managerial and executive positions, and eventually they should take a dominant place in the banking industry and Wall Street.
Unfortunately these higher paying positions currently are filled with overwhelmingly white men (and they are doing such a good job aren't they?)The recovery is making it more difficult for women to break into these higher paying jobs currently.
Job Equity should not just consider if someone has a job, but also the compensation. We need to start supporting Unions again because they are trying to raise everybody's boats. The anti union forces want everyone to get paid like Chinese peasants with no benefits, safety rules or environmental protections. They want to drag people down except they are fine with the tremendous job inequality of the hedge fund managers who make a thousand times as much as the union workers.
Women and minorities will only reach equity and be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps when we have equality in education and training.
"To deal with the chronic economic malaise behind the immediate crisis, disadvantaged and marginalized workers need more than recovery to get them to where they deserve to be: They need justice."
Indeed, but are they asking for justice? Obama has already given away the farm. What's going to happen when the public employee unions are dismantled? Eventually all this talk about democracy and justice will be mere platitudes in the new caste system of America. WE better take to the streets soon if we want to save what is left of our freedoms and democracy!
It's material like this that gives feminism a bad name.
I was hoping it was satire but it's isn't, it really isn't.
N.
M. Chen,
Sorry it took so long to get back, had a ton of stuff to do yesterday.
Thank you for responding to both myself and drone. I think I understand where you're coming from on this stuff a little better. I still don't completely agree, and like drone, have probably been one of your biggest distractors here on CD.
I guess in at least my defense is I get so tired of hearing about how white men are so damned privileged, especially in the comments threads. While the powerful at the top are mostly middle aged and older white men, it is a very exclusive club and the vast majority of us are excluded and marginalized along with every other group. Most of us aren't born into privilege and are just trying to get by.
What I think is lost on so many people is what is truly a self sustaining circle of distrust and fear among the various groups. I myself don't care what anybody else is, the only thing I truly care is that I can communicate with them and that they are good, decent people. I do know that one of the things we all need to do is not just highlight the very real injustices that you try to bring out, but point out that there really isn't any one "favored" group, except the wealthy.
On a separate note, I still can't figure out why some men can't see that we need to treat women with the same respect that they themselves demand. And this is in all areas of life, not just economic. After all, every man has at least a mother. And most of us have wives or girlfriends, daughters, sisters, aunts, cousins, grandmothers, and a whole host of other female loved ones.
Anyways, thanks for the reply.
"If God created man in his own image, you've got to wonder; in whose image did he create the nobler cat?"
- Author Unknown
Well I tried reading the original article and the responses again but nope, I'm afraid all I see here is sexist bigotry.
A classic example of the biased researcher finding what she wants to find.
Faced with men's higher level of unemployment, lower levels of college and men being hit harder by the current recession and loss of manufacturing jobs...
*Chirping crickets*
Aha! Women's already higher level of employment is not growing as fast as mens! Men are catching up!!?
Proof! Women are victims!
No.
This is nothing resembling anything as positive as equality or fairness or even promoting simple knowledge.
This a the bulldozing determination to find proof of female victimhood, even if she has to shove the real world aside to get to it.
Sure, I understand where she's coming from. From the position of sexist bigot.
What, exactly, does this author say about women? That they can only find work within the famously wasteful red-tape of government? That we as a society must provide 'make-work' for women, even as more productive jobs are being lost and the country is deep in recession and debt?
How much debt is enough?
How much higher does womens' employment have to be above mens' before they're "equal" for this author?
Black mens' unemployment is more than twice as high as white womens'. Is that not "equal" enough yet?
Oh yes, I understand.
And it's pathetic.
And any woman who's not insulted isn't thinking it through.
N.