Michelle Cottle analyzes a New York Times piece on the gender gap in layoffs. 82% of the job losses have hit men and women may soon be the majority of the workforce. She raises a few possible implications, tense marriages resulting from a change in breadwinner? Men being less likely to leave women because the men are economically dependent? Smooth adjustment?
The article itself had a few other points of interest beyond the topline stats:
Women may be safer in their jobs, but tend to find it harder to support a family. For one thing, they work fewer overall hours than men. Women are much more likely to be in part-time jobs without health insurance or unemployment insurance. Even in full-time jobs, women earn 80 cents for each dollar of their male counterparts’ income, according to the government data.
Universal health care will help with the health insurance problem. The others won’t have direct changes, but I expect increasing economic power of women will improve their bargaining position both economically and politically. Since some of these male jobs probably aren’t going to be coming back, I don’t think the changes will be as easily rolled back as some were post WWII, the Times throws out one case study:
She switched from being a full-time homemaker to a full-time businesswoman when her husband was laid off previously. She says she unexpectedly discovered that she loves her job, even if it is demanding…
In any event, having more money will help with household bargaining and also working to get better benefits for part time workers. However, women working in and of itself hasn’t been enough so far to entirely change the home:
On average, employed women devote much more time to child care and housework than employed men do, according to recent data from the government’s American Time Use Survey analyzed by two economists, Alan B. Krueger and Andreas Mueller.
I think the change there will probably be most notable in new relationships. It gets easy to get in a status quo pattern, I know I still rely too much on my Mom’s housework when I’m at the old family home. However, I don’t think change will necessarily be generational. Men who can’t find jobs equivalent to their old ones and that are unwilling to contribute more around the house will be more likely to be dumped if the women can afford it. Women dating men with weaker employment prospects will likely put more of a premium on home economics skills. All and all, as money and power are redistributed social norms tend to follow. The one substantial caveat I’d add is that we’re not talking about economic elites here, that makes a big difference for achieving political change. (This paragraph is obviously fairly heteronormative, implications differ for those in same sex relationships.)
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