Women and the Economy - Various Viewpoints

Jen Nedeau is Change.org's women's rights blogger, as well as a resource and frequently-quoted expert in online media. She recently pulled together a summary of some of the current thinking on the impact of our current economic situation on women, noting the that the opinions range from very pessimistic to somewhat positive (if you believe that women becoming the majority of the workforce because more men are losing their jobs is a good thing).

• Dana Goldstein, The American Prospect: How the Stimulus Sells Women Short, suggests that the difference in the rate of layoffs among men and women isn't something to celebrate - most families can't afford to lose one income if they need two to get by. The piece also notes that in the typical heterosexual family, the female's income is generally about 35% of the income for the household.
• Rebecca Traister, Salon.com: So You Still Want to Date a Banker: Traister takes on the the conversations related to how job loss for men will affect their relationships with women (a discussion stimulated by the NYT's piece on the faux-group, Dating a Banker Anonymous). Traister raises an interesting question about the impact of this significant economic downturn on the roles of men and women in the workforce and society, noting that "previous moments of economic crisis have also sent women into the workforce in large numbers -- see the Depression, World War II, the 1970s."

I have yet to see data that breaks down gender job loss based on professional and managerial positions in organizations - doesn't mean it isn't out there, I just haven't found it yet. But in the time that I've been in the workforce, downturns in the economy have generally been considered a negative influence on women's employment in white collar positions - that there is a tendency in some organizations to "circle the wagons" so to speak with the people most like senior management (typically white men). Such has been the experience of some women in the financial arena, as noted in Forbes.com's Terminated: Why the Women of Wall Street are Disappearing. In the article, author Anita Raghavan notes:

• "In the worst financial crash since the Depression, financial services and insurance firms have cut 260,000 jobs. Seventy-two percent of the missing workers laid off have been women, even though they constituted 64% of employment before the crash began."

Raghavan also shares one of the arguments used as a defense in response to claims by women of gender-based layoffs: "perhaps some new moms and older women have simply lost their mojo."