The Truth About Women and the Recession

The current economic downturn is hitting women about as hard as men, though like many pressing social issues today you wouldn't know it by looking at mainstream culture.

Instead we read about women like Molly. Her husband, Tom Pyles, was one of three laid-off male executives profiled in a recent article, "Commute to Nowhere," in The New York Times Magazine. Once fat and happy as a self-identified "spoiled banker's wife," the recession came as a complete shock to Molly. She didn't sleep for weeks after finding out how much her husband lost in the stock market. "[She'd] never had any reason to examine the portfolio in the past," the author explains. Now Molly, who is Chinese, but emigrated from London, is contemplating working. "I never thought I'd have to work in America," she laments.

Jennie Wetterman was also living the American dream only a few years ago when her husband was making big bucks during the Internet boom. "The summer of 2001, I was at the pool everyday," she recently told Newsweek in an article covering, in large part, "the quiet, often painful transformation that takes place when Dad comes home with a severance package." "I went scuba diving, sky diving -- I must have read 30 books that summer." When her husband was laid off, she was forced to take a job at Old Navy. "I don't want to be in this situation two years down the road," she says flatly. "I'll have to put my foot down."

From these portraits, it is easy to forget that 60 percent of women work outside the home; or that nationwide they have been neck and neck with men in the unemployment lines. Currently, unemployment is at 6.1 percent for men and 5.2 percent for women, and for much of this year that gap has been even smaller. In February and March, only .3 percentage points separated men from women. Nevertheless, it is difficult to find a voice today that even acknowledges how the tough economy has directly affected women. Instead these days -- when people like Dick Cheney are deemed worthiest of tax cuts -- it seems all the sympathy we can muster is for white, formerly well-paid men.

The Newsweek piece, for instance, falsely states that women are weathering the recession better than their male counterparts -- "especially white-collar men who've been victimized by corporate downsizings." The Times article too downplays the effect the recession has had on women. While it acknowledges that women are being hit almost as hard as men, it focuses exclusively on the latter, flippantly dismissing women by saying that joblessness for men "entails surrendering an idea of who they are." Women in similar situations? Well, they "simply adapt and find some job." Just this month, People magazine perpetuated this same myth by profiling the struggles of two white, laid-off men.

Some analysts researching women and employment take issue with these portraits. "The idea that women don't mind being unemployed is a gross overgeneralization," counters Joan Williams, professor of law and director of the Program on Gender, Work and Family at the American University Law School. "While middle-class masculine identity is very closely entwined with having a job," she adds, "it is the purest of sexism to say that being unemployed is fine for women." In fact, "women have very different relationships to employment. Some can take it or leave it, but for others their sense of identity is just as intertwined with employment as men's...Being laid off can crush them."

But from profiles like those in The New York Times Magazine and Newsweek one would think the only effect the recession has had on women is that it has drastically affected their vacation schedules. "I love traveling, and I don't do that anymore," complains Molly. Don't even mention clothes shopping.