How the Recession Is No Boon to Women, at Home or at Work - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Call it the “mancession” or the “he-cession”: either way, men are losing jobs disproportionately compared with women in post-industrial economies as more of the remaining blue-collar jobs vanish.

• But while working women are reaching equality in numbers to men in terms of jobs held, if not positions of authority or pay, Newsweek notes the obvious: “[T]hese aren’t exactly boom times for women.”

• Women hold a larger number of jobs without basic benefits, never mind pensions. Growth in salaries is quite limited. Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, explained, “Women tend to choose a path that’s less risky, that’s more secure for their families.”

• How can the shift in jobs be made a gain for women in anything other than percentage? The fact that more than a third of US households now depend primarily on a woman for income can help sensitize the nation to the need to increase wages in such fields, says Eileen Appelbaum, director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University. We hope that isn’t as delusional as it sounds.

• At home, some analysts see hope that men will take greater roles in the household, but even Newsweek accepts that that is happening slowly if at all.

The Newsweek report