How a Bad Economy Turns Working Women Into Corporate Whores

The New York Times Sunday Magazine has an interesting gender gap story today about the economy’s effect on women in the workforce.

Lisa Belkin, a contributing writer for the magazine and author of the Times’ Motherlode blog, makes an observation that casual readers might find puzzling coming from the post-feminist pages of the Times: Women hold more jobs today than ever before, but that’s bad.

Belkin observes that while women have gone from holding 35% of American jobs four decades ago to almost half of them today, it’s only because their XY counterparts are getting more pink slips.

[ . . . ] women have gained this latest bit of ground mostly because men have lost it — 78 percent of the jobs lost during this recession were held by men. So not only is it unseemly to rejoice over a larger share of a smaller pie, it is also unsettling to face the fact that so much of the history of women in the workplace (both their leaps forward and their slips back) is a reaction to what was happening to men.

The most obvious instance of this phenomenon is, of course, factory and wartime workers of the ’40s who, let’s face it, only had jobs because the menfolk were off fighting a war. Belkin gives a slightly more in-depth recap of America’s feminization of labor, including how — in the ’90s and ’00s — a thriving economy led women to realize they didn’t have to work, so, you know, why should they?

Well, now times are tough, so many of those women are getting back into the saddle.

Fortunately for them, employers love women! They’re even more likely to get hired and keep their jobs than men are! Rejoice! Jubilation!

Except, you know, it’s only because employers think women are cheap and desperate. Belkin goes into some detail about this and quotes an expert here and there, but the reader’s digest version is that:

• Women, for instance, still make less than 80% of what men make. 77¢ on each dollar, Belkin says.
• Women who previously left the workforce and are now coming back are particularly cheap; economists estimate they take a 10% reduction in income for every two years they’ve been out of a job
• Most women work in either health care or schools, which are steadier gigs, but pay shit
• Overqualified women are so desperate for work, employers assume they’ll settle for pulling espresso shots at your local Starbucks

And in situations where the sexes are equal, they are equal. Successful and highly paid women, Belkin says, lose their jobs at the same rate as successful and highly paid men.

What we are learning from this one is that women have not reached parity, no matter what next month’s jobs data say. It is not good news when women surpass men because women are worth less. Perversely, real progress might come when we reach the place where a financial wallop means women lose as much ground as men.

So on the one hand, women are making significant inroads in the workplace, but not really, and it’s either because employers are still asshole misogynists or the economy’s so rough that women will literally do anything for a buck.

Yay, progress!

The New Gender Gap [via NYT]