The Great Recession was also called the Mancession as it decimated traditionally male-dominated industries such as construction and manufacturing, causing men to lose jobs at a higher rate than women. As the recovery crawled along, though, men began winning back jobs faster, causing the media to dub it the He-covery.
So how did the recession really lay along gender lines? Did the so-called Mancession leave room for women to rise up the corporate ranks or close the gender pay gap? Or with men now reclaiming jobs at a faster rate, will those gaps in female leadership and pay widen? There is no easy answer, just this truth: the recession left no one a winner.
The fact still remains more jobs were lost in this recession than in any past recession. This recession towers over others in terms of numbers, says Kristin Smith, family demographer with The Carsey Institute at the University of NH in Durham. While men lost a higher percentage of jobs than women in this recent recession, she says more women lost their jobs proportionately than in past recessions.
Economic Battle of the Sexes
Men lost twice as many jobs as women between the fourth quarter of 2007 and the fourth quarter of 2009, according to a March 2012 report about demographics and the recovery from the Pew Research Center. However, the report shows men have gained four times as many jobs as women during the recovery.
Single mothers in particular have been hit hard by the recession and job loss, Smith says. The jobs they typically have are lower wage jobs and those are the jobs that were lost to a greater extent for women, she says. The mancession also created huge economic challenges for families in general as men are still the primary breadwinners, Smith says.
Gender alone, though, doesn't tell the whole story. Age also played a role in how men and women fared, says Steve Norton, executive director of the NH Center for Public Policy Studies. When you look at unemployment rates by age, you see very different patterns between males and females, Norton says. The unemployment rate for women ages 55 to 64 increased four times faster than for men of a
similar age.
Those women tend to dominate fields such as teaching, retail and administrative services-low paying sectors that bled jobs during the recession, says Dennis Delay, an economist with the NH Center for Public Policy Studies.
Data suggests women may now be catching up, according to a briefing paper released in August by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR). As of June 2012, men have regained 46.2 percent of the jobs they lost since the start of the recession and women have regained 38.7 percent of the jobs they lost, the Institute's briefing states. Women's employment growth was aided by strong growth in professional and business services (37,000 jobs added for women) and education and health services (35,000 jobs added for women). Government also added 3,000 jobs for women after losing 91,000 jobs in the last 12 months (July 2011 to June 2012).
However, in this political atmosphere, government spending continues to be cut at all levels, which will likely mean more government jobs lost. The cut backs on public spending and layoffs of primary and secondary teachers disproportionately affect more women than men, says Ross Gittell, chancellor of the Community College System of NH and an economist.
Investing in the Future
Woman now make up a majority of college students, and thus the future workforce. That's why investing in women's professional development is crucial for business success. Ella L.J. Edmondson Bell, associate professor of business administration with the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in Hanover, is a founding member of Ascent, a new nonprofit committed to the professional development and career excellence of multicultural women.
By not putting due diligence and resources to create the developmental programs and opportunities needed, we are putting ourselves behind the eight ball to be a competitive nation because we are not developing and supporting our talent pool, Bell says. When I look at some of our executive programs at Tuck, most of [the students] are men. There are some women, but the greater number is white males. That's not going to be your leadership pool in a few years.
Women also need to reach professionally beyond the traditional industries they tend to enter, says Annabel Beerel, founder of the New England Women's Leadership Institute and a leadership consultant. There are enormous opportunities for them in manufacturing and software development.
There are also opportunities in technical fields. Gittell says the Community College System is working to provide more education around advanced manufacturing, which has a high demand for skilled labor. He says more needs to be done to get women to enter technical degree programs and for more men to get schooling beyond high school in vocational and technical training programs. Middle school and high school is where students form career aspirations. We have to inform young people in middle school or before what the jobs of the future are and the skills, they require, Gittell says.
The Pay Gap
Prior to the recession, there was a pay gap. Unfortunately, there still is. Women in NH earn 78 cents of what men make, according to a 2012 report by the American Association of University Women (AAUW). New Hampshire, according to the AAUW report, falls in the top half of states nationally for the ratio of women's earnings to men's.
Mary Johanna Brown, chair of The NH Women's Initiative and founder and president of Brown & Company Design in Portsmouth, says progress on closing the gender wage gap has slowed. There are still shocking disparities despite similar job titles, education, and experience, she says.
Smith says her research at the Carsey Institute shows the recession accelerated the trend of wives contributing more to total earnings as more husbands lost jobs. During that time, the wage gap between men and women stagnated, neither growing nor shrinking, she says. But the contribution that wives are making in total family earnings is increasing, Smith says. The AAUW report points out that equal pay is not simply a woman's issue, but a family issue. Families increasingly rely on women's wages to make ends meet. In typical married households, women's incomes accounted for 36 percent of total family income in 2008, up from 29 percent in 1983. A large majority of mothers work outside the home, and about one-third of them are the sole breadwinners for their families, the AAUW report states.
Based on her discussions with women attending her events, Beerel says many professional women have taken on extra responsibilities without reward. The recession eliminated many middle management positions and many were held by men, she says. Many women were invited or coerced into taking on some of these responsibilities, but they did not get the commensurate pay of taking on these greater responsibilities. Beerel says more women need to become better negotiators to get the pay and title they deserve. We don't know how to play to our best interest, she says.
Asked if men losing jobs at a higher rate meant more opportunity for women to climb the corporate ladder, Brown says, The recession affected both men and women negatively. While we may see shifts in the type of work both men and women do or the roles they play in their families, the recession should not be viewed as a gateway of opportunity for women. In fact, nationally, the percentage of women in executive positions has been declining in the past few years.
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