23 July 2008
women and work
There is a great link on Perverse Egalitarianism concerning women and the economy. Nicole rightly states: 'I'm insulted. It took them ten years to figure out that women would drop out of the work force for the same reason as men?!?!?'
From the NYT article she cites 'Women Are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy':
...the percentage of women at work has fallen, not risen, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Each of the seven previous recoveries since 1960 ended with a greater percentage of women at work than when it began.
When economists first started noticing this trend two or three years ago, many suggested that the pullback from paid employment was a matter of the women themselves deciding to stay home — to raise children or because their husbands were doing well or because, more than men, they felt committed to running their households.
But now, a different explanation is turning up in government data, in the research of a few economists and in a Congressional study, to be released Tuesday, that follows the women’s story through the end of 2007.
After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for a while.
One of the main factors cited by feminists and egalitarianists everywhere in favour of the 'still some way to go' argument is the disparity between men and women's pay for the same job, and women's heavy presence in part-time and badly-paid jobs (regardless of whether they have children or not - which argument always assumes the primary burden of care lies with women anyway, which is evil).
Laura Kipnis, among others, has argued that this persistent pay disparity actually masks a greater economy horror story - that 'equity' can mean just being 'equally screwed over'. She points out in The Female Thing that men's wages stagnated or dropped during the same time that women's pay rose: 'In other words, women's wages are up to 80 percent of men's because male wages are down.' You see, it's even more depressing than you think!
