Offshoring, Downsizing, Rightsizing: Job Losses Hitting Women Hard

Offshoring, downsizing, rightsizing ... mention these words, and the image that pops in most people's heads is a hefty Midwestern man grumbling about his economic problems and then voting Republican.

But Lou Uchitelle has a piece today entitled "Women Are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy" that shows this view to be fatally flawed:

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 ...

Hard times in manufacturing certainly sidelined Tootie Samson of Baxter, Iowa. Nine months after she lost her job on a factory assembly line, Ms. Samson, 48, is still not working. She could be. Jobs that pay $8 or $9 an hour are easy enough to land, she says. But like the men with whom she worked at the Maytag washing machine factory, now closed, near her home, she resists going back to work at less than half her old wage ...

The Joint Economic Committee study cites the growing statistical evidence that women are leaving the work force "on par with men," and the potentially disastrous consequences for families.